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Shortly after 5 p.m., during the rush hour commute at the 21st Street and 41st Avenue subway station in Queens, two plainclothes police officers were shot while struggling with a man illegally using a student Metrocard.
As he was being handcuffed, the suspect, identified as Raul Nunez, 32, struggled with the cops, Shane Farina, 38, and Jason Maass, 28. Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said, "All three went to the ground. During the struggle, one of the officer's guns came loose...Nuñez grabbed it, stood up and fired at both officers while they were on the ground."
Nunez ran up the station's escalator, firing at the cops once again, but another plainclothes police officer, Lt. Gary Abrahall who had been supervising Farina and Maass, was up there and confronted him. Nunez fired three times at Abrahall, who was not hit; Abrahall then fired back at Nunez, hitting him in the leg and torso.
Maass suffered a gunshot wound in the back, while Farina's was in the sternum. The Daily News reports that "Maass is expected to be released Wednesday," while the bullet that hit Farina went "through the cloth in the side of [his] bulletproof vest, ripping into the officer's side, fracturing a rib and exiting his chest." Farina is in critical but stable condition.
Nunez, an illegal immigrant from the Dominican Republic who had been previously deported for a drug conviction, indicated he was afraid of being deported again. He was caught with the student Metrocard because a light goes off at the turnstile when a student Metrocards are used; according to the NY Times, Abrahall, "who concluded that [Nunez] did not look like a student...radioed from the station booth on the upper level to the officers on the Manhattan-bound platform below that a man approaching them appeared to be a fare beater." The Queens DA's office said Nunez will be charged with attempted murder of a police officer.
Police swarmed the neighborhood after the shooting--one man said, "Cops were jumping out of their cars before they were even stopped. They were shouting, ‘Get out of the way.’" Unfortunately, the neighborhood wasn't shocked by the violence. One man told the Post, "In this neighborhood this always happens. It's usually between the drug dealers."
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Illegal aliens gone wild.
Maybe this unpleasantly plump cockroach Raul Nunez flunked out of class so many times in school that he is still a student. Seriously folks, Queenbridges House's needs to be demolished and turned into a bird sanctuary or something to that effect.
"Dont even get me started on the Dominicans, b/c they make the Puerto Ricans look good"
I drove through this as it was happening. Never seen so many cop cars in my life. It was like Grand Theft Auto.
question: you are caught using a student metrocard, do you:
a) go quietly
b) run
c) grap the cop's gun & try to murder 3 police officers?
I find it disturbing that a cop can be disarmed so easily and that the cop who eventually shot the punk couldn't manage one kill shot.
Hopefully, massive infection for Mr. Nunez, then Darwin Award.
I imagine it's your long law enforcement experience that informs your opinion, ides, and not tv/movies, right?
They should have just left the guy alone. I hope the cops learned that petty crime is not worth enforcing. Or dying over.
I remember in Paris that the cops' guns were wired to their bodies with elastic springy cords similar to what you see on a phone. They could use the gun but it couldn't get far away from them. Sounds like perhaps maybe just possibly that might be something to try here.
I guess this dude really, really, really liked living in America. Let's see if he enjoys our court system.
QWIK get ACORN to sign him-up to VOTE!!! ANOTHER 'HAPPY-GO-LUCKY' supporter of eventual PREZ 'BUTTHEAD'BARRY-the-1st!!! Ha.
Whatever, Queens is essentially north Haiti at this point.
Reflect- that's dumb.
I just read that India is joining the space race... and that there are already space ships from Japan and China up there. We need some Dominicans up there too! It'll be just like Queens!
By the way, where were the Pretty Boy Goonies and the Bloods when we needed them?
The reason why the police go after fare jumpers is not to save the MTA $2. It's to catch criminals. In the 80s they figured out that many of the criminals with outstanding warrants were also fare jumpers. So by easily catching them jumping fares, they were able to detain them, check records and find out if those people were wanted. And many of them were.
To add to meganificient's point, keeping track of fare jumpers can be useful: After a dentist was fatally shot in a Queens playground in front of his child, the police pulled a fingerprint off the silencer and matched it to that of someone who tried to beat a fare in 1994-- who turned out to be the dentist's ex-wife's uncle.