The wife of a veteran NYPD officer was arrested yesterday for fatally shooting a young Brooklyn man who had groped her 13-year-old daughter last month, The Post has learned.
Veronica Nickey, 40, walked up to Ellison Butler, 22, as he watched a basketball game at about 9 p.m. on June 27 in Lincoln Terrace Park in Crown Heights - then pulled a .380-caliber handgun, a source said.
She put one bullet into his chest, shouting, "That's what you get for messing with my children! That's what you get for messing with my daughter!" witnesses told cops.
She tried to shoot Butler again, but the gun jammed, according to sources.
Butler had been on the basketball court waiting to play the next game. After the shooting, he staggered to a men's room, collapsed and died.
"He was always very playful with girls," said a neighborhood friend who gave her name as Jacynta. "He . . . probably didn't take [the encounter with Nickey's daughter] seriously."
Cops initially did not know the motive for the shooting of Butler, who had several prior arrests. They now believe he was killed by an overprotective mother, according to the sources.
Butler had allegedly grabbed Nickey's daughter about two weeks earlier, the sources said.
After the mother fled the shooting scene, witnesses told cops they recognized her as "Veronica" from a nearby building.
Police gathered pictures of every woman named Veronica in that building and witnesses picked Nickey out.
Law-enforcement sources said her husband, Officer Arnold Nickey, a 14-year veteran out of the 73rd Precinct, has only two 9 mm pistols registered to his name. It was unclear where she allegedly got the .380.
Veronica Nickey was charged last night with murder and criminal possession of a weapon.