The NYPD officer wounded in Tuesday's subway shooting returned to his home in West Babylon. He gave the thumbs up to reporters and took advantage of the opportunity to praise his colleague, Shane Farina, who is still recovering from surgery.

"My partner's a hero," said Maass.

Farina underwent an abdominal surgery that took three hours. The 38-year-old police officer of Center Moriches, was listed in stable condition at the Elmhurst Medical Center and he is still in the medical facility recovering after the operation.

The two plainclothes police officers were involved in a shooting that occurred at about 5:15 p.m. local time Thursday when the two confronted a Dominican Republic-native who had illegally entered the 21st Street-Queensbridge subway station by using an unauthorized student MetroCard. The Dominican, 32-year-old Raul Alfonso Nuñez, struggled with the two officers, grabbed Maass' 9-mm handgun and shot them both.  Despite the fact that they were wearing bulletproof vests, they suffered severe wounds.

Nuñez fled the scene, but he was shot by another police officer who was the leader of the operation. Lt. Gary Abrahall fired six bullets at Nuñez and four of them hit the target. Abrahall wasn’t hurt although Nuñez fired three times at him.

Farina, a four-year veteran, was shot in the sternum and suffered a fractured rib and a lacerated liver, while Maass was injured by a bullet grazing his back and bullet fragments in his pelvis.

"A tough guy. He's going to be OK. There was a laceration of the liver but there was very little bleeding," said a hospital spokesman Dario Centorcelli about Farina.

As for 44-year-old Lt. Abrahall, he acted "appropriately and heroically," as police commissioner Ray Kelly said in an interview outside the hospital.

Nuñez is an ex-convict who was deported in 1998 for being involved in traffic with narcotics. He probably did everything he could do to avoid being arrested because he feared deportation.