Father and son, both members of the NYPD, owe their lives to their bulletproof vests, with each having their own dramatic story nearly three decades apart.
Andrew Yurkiw, who joined the New York Police Department in 2012, proudly followed in the footsteps of his father, 71-year-old Paul Yurkiw, who began his career with the force in 1982.
While wearing the NYPD uniform was a shared experience for both, Andrew never expected that, like his father, his bulletproof vest would one day save his life.
“I never thought it would happen to me,” recalled the 39-year-old Andrew Yurkiw. “I always believed lightning doesn’t strike twice in the same spot.”
His father’s life was saved on June 21, 1989, when he stopped to assist what seemed to be a disabled vehicle on a service road along the Van Wyck Expressway near Rockaway Boulevard. It was around 1:30 a.m. when Paul noticed a motorist in apparent distress.
His father stopped to assist what he thought was a disabled vehicle on a service road along the Van Wyke Expressway near Rockaway Boulevard around 1:30 a.m. on June 21, 1989, when he saw a motorist who appeared to be in distress.
Yurkiw pulled over and got out of his Emergency Services Unit truck. The driver had also exited his car.
Yurkiw was about to ask, “You stuck? You need a hand?” when the situation suddenly shifted.
“He took a .38-caliber Taurus revolver, pushed it up against my chest and hit me three times,” the dad recalled of being shot at close range.
“The bullets ricocheted off the vest,” Yurkiw said. “It defeated eight out of the 10 layers of Kevlar.”
Moments later, the two men were wrestling, rolling around on the roadway, but the shooter was able to pull free and fled. The man was eventually captured.
Yurkiw didn’t usually wear a vest, but “working on the late tour, it gets a little chilly, so it’s a little extra warmth,” he said.
“It worked in my favor,” he said, jokingly.
Shawn Boyd was convicted of attempted murder for shooting Yurkiw. He was paroled after serving 30 years and released in 2020.
Yurkiw suffered some bruising and some light bleeding, but he felt like he was hit even harder when his son was shot 27 years later while working in an Anti-Crime Unit in Brooklyn.
Andrew Yurkiw was on a shots-fired call on Lexington Avenue in Bedford-Stuyvesant when someone in a vehicle slowly passing by “pointed a firearm” out the window at his car around 4 a.m. on Feb. 20, 2016, he said.
A patrol car coming the other way down the street blocked the gunman’s vehicle in between the two cop cars and Yurkiw sprung into action.
“So I jumped out of the back seat of the car,” the younger Yurkiw said. “We exchanged gunfire.”
Other police officers who were there also fired, he said.
“I took cover because I felt I was hit,” he said. “I was wearing a new Carhartt sweatshirt, and I put my finger through a hole, so that was an indication.”
He ran his hand under his vest and pulled out his fingers pink with blood.
“So I kept digging for a hole, but there was no hole,” he said.
The blood came from a deep cut caused by the impact, he explained.
Paul Yurkiw, whose dad was also an NYPD detective, still gets emotional when he talks about what happened to his son.
“I got the phone call when they were taking him to hospital in the ambulance, and I thought maybe he was struck with the car,” the dad said, as tears welled up in his eyes. “It turned out that he did a good job.”
Andrew Yurkiw, who has two sons, said he feels bad for his mom.
“She had to go through it again,” he said. “He called my mom to tell her he got shot and now I had to call her and tell her I got shot.”
