Bergen Prosecutor Reveals Morgan Returned Fire, Despite Being Wounded

Bergen County Prosecutor John Molinelli lauded wounded Paramus officer Rachel Morgan as a hero Thursday in announcing the results of his office's investigation of the Super Bowl Sunday shooting.

Morgan , a Parsippany native, and fellow officer Ryan Hayo were "more than" justified in their exchange of gunfire with Michael Carmody on a Parkway on-ramp in early February, Molinelli said.

"Our office has found that both Officer Rachel Morgan and Ryan Hayo on the evening in question operated in a professional manner," Molinelli said.

Morgan donned her uniform Thursday for the first time since the night of the shooting.

She explained that she knew immediately that Carmody had wounded her. In what to her seemed infinitely longer than the 22 seconds the entire incident took to transpire, the two made eye contact as she approached Carmody's vehicle.

The silver Acura had spun out on the on-ramp to the Garden State Parkway from Route 17 southbound, and was lodged in the grass and snow.

Carmody's car had turned completely around, and Carmody, in the driver's seat, could see Morgan get out of her car.

"He made a furtive movement with his one arm—with his right arm," Morgan said. "It dropped, which caused me to look in that direction. As the arm came back up, I saw the weapon."

Morgan tried to fold her 6-foot-tall frame into as small a space as possible.

"I'm big out there," she said. "It was just me and grass and snow so I was a target. So I tried to make myself disappear and stop him from firing at me by firing at him."

Hayo got out of his car as Morgan approached Carmody's car. He saw a flash from inside Carmody's car—gunfire—and drew his weapon.

As Hayo opened fire, Carmody had shot Morgan.

The first bullet entered the right side of her lower back, causing significant internal damage before exiting through her abdomen just below her sternum. After exiting it penetrated again, just below her breastline and then came out, coming to rest between her body and her bulletproof vest.

A second bullet pierced her right buttock, traveling through her hip, striking bone, and exited out her pelvic area, mangling her handcuffs as it went. She was nearly struck by another bullet that left a hole in the upper right sleeve of her shirt.

Despite her wounds, she continued to fire while lying on her back in an attempt to protect herself, Hayo and the passengers of the vehicles lined up behind the police cars on the ramp.

"Fight or flight," she said. "I wasn't fleeing."

Meanwhile, Hayo had struck, shooting Carmody once in the left arm.

"I didn't actually see her go down," Hayo said. "I was concentrating on the person shooting her."

The driver's side door of Carmody's silver Acura, riddled with more than a dozen bullets from Hayo and Morgan, was on display at the prosecutor's office. The eight lower body wounds Carmody sustained as he fired through the car window were caused by fragments of the door piercing his legs.

Hayo and Morgan fired all 26 available shots at Carmody. Carmody fired six shots at Morgan, the investigation revealed.

The seventh bullet, Carmody used on himself. He aimed the gun upwards at his chin.

"The fatal shot was the one that was self-inflicted by Mr. Carmody," Molinelli said.

He was taken off life support at St. Joseph's Regional Medical Center in Paterson Feb. 9 at 2:48 p.m. He died at 3:02 p.m.

Even after the investigation, which took nearly two months to complete, Molinelli could still only guess as to why Carmody was in Paramus—why exactly he fled from Morgan at an estimated 90 miles per hour.

Molinelli revealed a number of possibilities: a history of gun possession, including the weapon in the car, the fact that Carmody was driving with a suspended license, even a crack pipe found near the Acura after the shooting could have led him to run.

Molinelli said Carmody was returning from a Super Bowl party in Bogota to his Westwood home, but stopped at the BP station on 17 south.

As he pulled his vehicle out of the parking lot, he nearly ran into Morgan, who checked the plates on his Acura and found they matched a 1986 black Porsche 944, at the time parked in the driveway of the Westwood home where Carmody lived with his father. The Porsche belonged to Carmody, but he had affixed the plates to the Acura.

The Porsche was likely purchased with what Molinelli called a moderate inheritance that Carmody received from his grandparents. It wasn't the only gift Carmody received from them.

The gun he used to shoot Morgan, a Polish weapon used during World War II, was likely an heirloom from Carmody's grandfather, who served during the war in the European theater.

"We speculate, with confidence, that in all probability, that is where Mr. Carmody came up with this gun," Molinelli said.

Though these questions linger, the end of the investigation, in large part, brings the Carmody case to a close. Morgan said she is on her way to patrolling the Paramus highways again, and Molinelli was effusive in his praise for her.

"To be able to return fire, to empty her full service weapon, not just for her own protection, but also for the protection of Officer Hayo, is extraordinary," he said. "We call those people heroes, and she is."