An NYPD cop emerged Sunday from the medically induced coma that doctors placed him in following a deadly melee in a Brooklyn nail salon, The Post has learned.
Officer Lesly Lafontant, 53, is able to sit up in his hospital bed and has recognized people and started speaking, law-enforcement sources said.
But the well-respected, 21-year NYPD veteran remains under intensive care and receiving only a limited number of visitors at Brookdale University Hospital Medical Center in Brooklyn, the sources said.
“He has a long road ahead of him,” one source said.
“He has some very serious injuries but it’s a good sign that he’s sitting up.”
Lafontant was trying to handcuff a panhandler accused of urinating inside the Goldmine Nails Spa in Brownsville on Friday night when T-shirt vendor Kwesi Ashun entered, grabbed a metal chair and raised it to attack the cop, the NYPD has said.
Lafontant’s rookie partner fired a Taser at Ashun, 33, but it had no effect, possibly because both barbs didn’t pierce his skin, sources said.
Ashun, who has a history of mental illness, repeatedly bashed Lafontant in the face with the chair, leading Lafontant to fire six shots, at least one of which hit Ashun in the head, killing him.
Lafontant suffered broken orbital bones, a broken cheekbone and an eye injury, sources said.
Ashun had bipolar disorder and was evaluated by a city Health Department “mobile crisis team” that determined he wasn’t a threat to himself or others just 11 days before the incident, his sister has said.
In 2004, he was accused in the unprovoked slashing of an NYPD cop who was cut from his left ear to his neck, The Post reported at the time.
He was taken for psychiatric evaluation following that incident and records related to his arrest have been sealed.