NEW YORK -- Leaks from the videotaped confession of 'Death Wish' gunman Bernhard Goetz include quotes that he was sorry he 'ran out of bullets' and wished he had used his car keys to gouge out one of his victim's eyes, it was reported today.
The leaked reports were published in New York's Daily News and the New York Post as Sen. Alfonse D'Amato, R-N.Y., softened his support for Goetz.
Goetz, who surrendered to Concord, N.H., police on New Year's Eve, was quoted in the newspapers as telling New Hampshire police he regretted he did not do more to his victims.
'I would have kept shooting had I not run out of bullets,' Goetz told police. He was also quoted saying, 'I should have gouged his eyes out with my car keys.'
The sources quoted said Goetz was referring to Troy Canty, 19, one of four youths who harassed him and asked him for $5 aboard a Manhattan subway train Dec. 22.
Goetz, 37, shot all four teenagers, helped an elderly woman to her seat and then fled through a subway tunnel. One of the teenagers remains in a coma.
Joseph Kelner, a prominent New York lawyer who is representing Goetz without pay, told a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on crime Thursday that his client 'acted reasonably. ... He acted in a way that was justifiable. ... He was confronted and surrounded by four people, which is tantamount to a life-threatening situation.'
The shootings won cheers from many New Yorkers, and the praise for Goetz continued Thursday when D'Amato told the Senate hearing that he was also afraid of the subways, that his 22-year-old daughter was fondled on a subway train two years ago, and that his bodyguards keep their hands on Mace while riding the trains.
During the hearing, D'Amato also told Kelner that he would be willing to testify as an 'expert witness' about the dangers of riding the subways if Goetz is brought to trial.
The senator softened the statement early today in appearances on CBS Nightwatch.
'It's being totally taken out of context,' D'Amato said. 'I indicated that I would testify with respect to and the subject was the unsafe situation that exist in the subways ... so when Mr. Goetz's lawyer said would you testify to the unsafe situation, I said certainly I would with respect to that.'
Earlier, D'Amato also told the Senate hearing, 'The Bernhard Goetz case has demonstrated in the clearest possible terms the public's rage over a criminal justice system that has failed in its most sacred duty - to protect the people from punks and career criminals.'
He said people take the law into their own hands because authorities are 'failing in their most basic duty of providing domestic tranquility in our neighborhoods.'
Kelner told the hearing, 'The brave are those who survive crime in America.'
The lawyer said Goetz is not a 'vigilante,' someone who takes the law into his own hands or 'gets a gun and goes out hunting like a rabbit hunter.' Instead, he said, Goetz is the 'personification, the symbol of the finest we can produce in society.'
D'Amato pointed to the case of David Velez, who was arrested 15 times and convicted 10 times between 1978 and 1984, but served only 14 days in jail as a failure of the court system. Goetz, who is charged with attempted murder and illegal possession of a weapon, will plead innocent to the charges, Kelner said, but the lawyer declined to say whether Goetz will claim he acted in self defense.
He has been dubbed the 'Death Wish' gunman after the Charles Bronson vigilante character in the movie of the same name.
