Shooter ‘knew he did a bad thing’

HAYDEN, Idaho – Michael Anthony Madonna told deputies after he shot and wounded a Coeur d’Alene Police officer to “just kill me,” according to his sister. They did.

Angel Madonna said her brother was expressing immediate remorse about having used his .357-caliber Magnum revolver to shoot Officer Michael Kralicek in the face.

“He knew he did a bad thing,” Angel Madonna told the Coeur d’Alene Press on Friday, a day after her brother’s body was cremated.

Kralicek, 33, remains in serious but stable condition at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, where he was flown hours after the 12:20 a.m. shooting.

The first of Michael Madonna’s two shots from the high-powered revolver struck the officer in the cheek, breaking his jaw and severing his carotid artery before lodging in the back of his neck.

Angel Madonna, of Fairplay, Colo., said her brother was upset over a Dec. 17 arrest on suspicion of drunken driving. After his Dec. 20 release from jail, he was holding a “constant party” at his Hayden home, she said. “The garage looked like a nightclub.”

She said she talked to him on the phone just hours before the shooting about his involvement in the theft of two beer kegs that night. The theft and a hit-and-run report led Kralicek to Madonna’s home before the shootout.

Angel Madonna said her brother died just inside the doorway to a garage and that the home was riddled with bullets from at least 20 rounds. A dog also was killed in the fusillade.

Family members do not plan to pursue a case against police officers.