NEW YORK (AP) – A police officer who was shot in the heart early Monday during a car chase in Brooklyn ignored the wound and helped try to catch the suspected shooter before dying later at the hospital, authorities said.

The officer, Dillon Stewart, 35, of Elmont, on Long Island, was killed despite wearing a bulletproof vest. One round entered the officer’s left armpit, missing the protective plating “by no more than a quarter of an inch,” Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said at a news conference.

Stewart, a five-year member of the force who was married with two children, “showed remarkable tenacity and courage in pursuing his assailant,” Kelly said.

Detectives were questioning a 27-year-old suspect, Allan Cameron, described as the owner of a car that started the chase by running a red light. A Glock 9 mm handgun, believed to be the homicide weapon, was discovered ditched outside a Brooklyn apartment building where he was captured after a massive manhunt, police said.

Authorities said the suspected shooter, who surrendered peacefully, was given three years probation in 2003 after pleading guilty to various traffic violations. Authorities said Cameron has yet to be formally charged in the shooting and did not have a defense lawyer.

The incident began at about 2:50 a.m. when Stewart and his partner, Paul Lipka, were on patrol in the East Flatbush neighborhood while in uniform and in a dark green unmarked car. The officers spotted a 1990 Infiniti with stolen New Jersey license plates speeding through a red light. Stewart, who was driving, made a U-turn and pursued the car with lights and sirens on.

At one point, the police car pulled alongside the other vehicle on its passenger side. That’s when the driver leaned over and began shooting, police said.

The suspect “fired at least five times at the officers, shooting outside the passenger side window of his own car and striking Officer Stewart in the chest,” Kelly said.

With Stewart still in pursuit, the suspect sped to a basement garage on East 21st street, about two blocks away. Lipka and another backup officer shot at the Infiniti as a mechanized metal gate at the garage entrance rolled down; police believe the driver escaped by climbing out a window.

“It was at this point that Stewart, who had left the police car, realized he had been shot,” the commissioner said. He remained conscious as the other officers rushed him to the hospital.

Following surgery, Stewart’s heart stopped beating, and doctors attempted to revive him for over an hour.

“Despite the heroic efforts of surgeons,” Kelly said, “Officer Stewart died at 8:40 this morning.”

Stewart was the first officer killed in the city in the line of duty this year, police said. The last fatal shooting was in September 2004, when an ex-convict killed two detectives in Brooklyn.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg called Stewart’s death a “terrible tragedy for New York City,” and asked New Yorkers to pray for the officer’s family.

In Stewart’s Long Island neighborhood, news of his death began to sink in.

“He’s a nice guy,” said one neighbor, Frantz Racine. “He’d wave and say hi.”

Racine said he had seen police cars pull up to the officer’s home early in the morning.

“I knew something was wrong but I didn’t know what,” he said. “What a shock.”