By Thomas Tracy
New York Daily News
NEW YORK — A hero FDNY firefighter was arrested for attacking a fellow smoke-eater with a chair in a Staten Island fire station, police said Wednesday.
Firefighter Christopher Mullin, 53, was busted Monday for the Friday night firefighter-on-firefighter attack in Rescue 5 headquarters on Clove Road near Targee St. in Concord, cops said.
During an argument with the 62-year-old firefighter, Mullin allegedly pulled the other man’s chair out from under him, causing him to fall to the floor and “hit his left arm and head to the ground,” according to court documents.
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Mullin repeatedly punched the older firefighter as he lay on the ground and then “picked up a chair and struck [him] once about the body with said chair,” the documents said.
By the time the fight was broken up, the older firefighter had suffered minor injuries to his head, hip, elbows and hands, officials said. He was taken to an area hospital for treatment.
The attack was reminiscent of a drunken 2003 New Year’s Eve clash at a Staten Island firehouse that led to a firefighter being repeatedly struck with a chair and hospitalized, and a half-dozen firefighters and their superiors being suspended and reassigned for drinking on the job.
It was not immediately clear what sparked last week’s Bravest brawl. The firefighter that Mullin attacked was not in Rescue 5, but the team shares quarters with firefighters from Engine 160 and Division 8, officials said.
Alcohol did not play a role in the incident, an FDNY official with knowledge of the case said.
Mullin surrendered to authorities Monday and was charged with second-degree assault, harassment and weapons possession. At his arraignment later that day, the Staten Island district attorney’s office asked that Mullin be held on $10,000 bail, but a judge ordered him released without bail.
He’s currently suspended without pay as the case is being investigated, an FDNY spokeswoman said.
“The safety of the brave men and women of the FDNY is our utmost priority, and behavior of this kind is unacceptable,” the spokeswoman said.
A call to Mullin’s attorney was not immediately returned.
In 2017, Mullin and his team at Rescue 5, known as “Blue Thunder,” were awarded the Firefighter Thomas R. Elsasser Memorial Medal for helping to pull a firefighter from another firehouse out of a burning building after the firefighter fell through the floor and was trapped in the basement.
In New Year’s Eve 2003 fight, a booze-fueled brawl broke out between two firefighters in Engine 161 and Ladder 76 Tottenville during a disagreement over the date of Elvis Presley’s birthday, officials said.
A firefighter wound up critically injured in the incident after he was struck over the head with a metal folding chair. The smoke-eater who attacked him faced criminal charges and four other firefighters were suspended for trying to cover up the on-the-job drinking. Their captain was demoted and forced to retire.
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