Ex-Cop Suspected of Fatally Shooting Girlfriend

NYPD photo of Bowens (left photo); Catherine Donofrio (on left) and Melissa Simmons

Jerry Bowens had apparently tracked down his girlfriend Catherine Donofrio at her friend Melissa Simmons's apartment on Engert Avenue. The Daily News reports that when Simmons "buzzed Bowens inside, an argument broke out, followed by gunfire. Sources said Bowens shot Donofrio in the head, then fired at Simmons, grazing her head and hitting her in the arm. Both women were taken to Bellevue Hospital, where Donofrio died on arrival." Simmons, though, was able to identify Bowens as the shooter.

The police had searched for Bowens, who was considered armed and dangerous, at the Bensonhurst house where Donofrio and her legally blind parents and grandmother lived in separate apartment (she moved in so she could take care of them). Bowens had called the police from a NJ motel in the afternoon, but was gone by the time the cops arrived. Police later spotted Bowens's car in Staten Island and arrested him. Bowens had previously been accused of taking cash and drugs from busts to reward an informant and was supposed to testify against another cop this week.

A colleague of Donofrio and Simmons, who both worked at a law firm as secretaries, told the News, "I knew [Donofrio] was dating some crazy guy. But how could someone do that?" And the Times notes the violence shook Simmons' neighbors at Northpoint Towers—"Neighbors gathered on Sunday night in the vestibule of the condominium building where the shooting occurred, discussing how such violence could seep into their complex, nine stories of glass and aluminum enclosing million-dollar penthouses and $700,000 apartments."