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On-Duty Officer Takes Own Life After Facebook Fight With Girlfriend

The scene where the uniformed officer shot himself early this morning.

NEW YORK – An on-duty city cop distraught over a possible breakup with his girlfriend pulled out his gun in front of her and fatally shot himself in the head early Tuesday.

“I love you,” Officer Philip Chlanda told his girlfriend before pulling the trigger on a Manhattan street.

The 29-year-old cop argued with his gal pal after he looked at her Facebook page to see if she was seeing anyone else, said Paul Browne, NYPD’s chief spokesman.

“He was left with the impression that she might leave him,” Browne said.

Chlanda, in uniform and on a meal break, left the apartment on E. 36th St. where he and the girlfriend lived with his parents. The couple walked downstairs and continued their argument on the sidewalk near the cop’s squad car.

As he pulled his service .9mm Glock about 3:20 a.m., the girlfriend ran toward him, but not in time to stop him firing, Browne said.

Chlanda was rushed to Bellevue Hospital, but died.

Browne called it “a sad, tragic incident.”

He said the officer, a 4-year veteran, had “an unblemished record,” with no issues. Chlanda was assigned to the 1st Precinct in Tribeca.

The couple had lived together in a room in his parents’ third floor apartment, he said, and planned to get their own apartment soon. “Nobody saw this coming,” said Browne.

“He was a gentle sort of fellow, very courteous,” said a neighbor, Dr. Rosemary Clemens. “It’s very unsettling. It’s particularly terrible when it’s somebody in the line of duty protecting others. He must have been a very troubled soul. All we can do is hope he’s in a better place.”