A misunderstanding turned deadly when an undercover cop wearing headphones to communicate with his NYPD peers didn't hear the rant of a resident trying to get the man he presumed to be a bum off his stoop, sources told the Daily News.
Brooklyn homeowner Shem Walker yelled at the unidentified officer, dressed in plain clothes, to get off his stoop and kicked the undercover officer in the back of the head when he refused to move from his Clinton Hill stoop, sources told the paper.
"With the earphones on, the cop just didn't hear anything. The next he knew, someone had kicked him, and the fight starts with a tragic end," law enforcement sources told the News.
Walker was notorious in the neighborhood for shooing away drug dealers and shady characters from the stoop of his mother's brownstone on Lafayette Ave.
When the cop turned toward Walker, the Army veteran socked him in the face, leaving the 36-year-old plainclothes officer with a bleeding gash over his left eye, cops told the paper.
The seven-year NYPD veteran pulled his gun and Walter punched the cop in the face a second time. An undercover NYPD officer nearby said cop yelled "Police! Freeze!" but witnesses just recall hearing the man yell "Freeze!"
The men fell down the stoop as they grappled for the weapon, which went off twice. Walker died from a bullet to the chest.
