Three suspects wanted for shooting a Bronx dad to death on a moving D train were nabbed Monday morning.
NYPD officers sporting tactical vests and agents with the US Marshals Fugitive Task Force toting assault weapons rounded up Alfredo Trinidad, 42, Betty Cotto, 38, and Justin Herde, 24, for allegedly killing 45-year-old Alfredo William Alvarez, cops said.
“I’m glad justice has been done,” said the victim’s nephew, Donovan, 22, who only wanted to be identified by his first name. “We’re glad that they got them off the streets before they could do anything else.”
The charges against the three suspects included murder, manslaughter and unlawful weapons possession.
Cops named and released surveillance footage from the train of the three suspects Sunday night and asked the public’s help tracking them down.
Members of the task force were spotted storming Trinidad’s Villa Ave. apartment near E. 205th St. in Bedford Park around 10:57 a.m., when they dragged him from his 11th-floor apartment in handcuffs.
The lawmen then went around the corner and entered an E. 205th St. apartment around 11:15 a.m., emerging shortly after with Cotto in handcuffs and loading her into an NYPD squad car.
Herde was spotted just before noon being escorted in chains out of the same Villa Ave. apartment building where Trinidad was cuffed about an hour earlier.
The suspects got on a Manhattan-bound train at Fordham St. around 4:05 a.m. Friday, cops said. When one of the men sat down next to the victim they became embroiled in an argument.
The dispute escalated into an all-out brawl, with all three suspects attacking the victim as the train rumbled south towards the 182-183rd Sts. station in Fordham, where Alvarez was discovered bleeding from a puncture wound, according to NYPD Transit Chief Michael Kemper.
Medics rushed the victim to St. Barnabas Hospital, where he died.
Kemper credited the suspects’ swift arrest to surveillance cameras, which recorded footage of the suspects aboard the train, inside the182-183rd Sts. station, and on the street after they fled the fatal shooting.
“The entire incident from beginning to end was captured by cameras,” Kemper said.
Alvarez had a 21-year-old son and 26-year-old daughter with his ex-wife, Erica Estremera, who is his high school sweetheart.
But the victim’s family had not seen him in several months before the fatal shooting, an absence Estremera blamed on his out-of-control drug use.
“My daughter did speak to him and he did tell her, ‘I’m fighting my battle. I’m battling my demons but I’m trying to be a good person,’” Estremera, 46, said. “But no matter what, he loved his family. I knew him and I know he did.”
Alvarez’s struggle with addiction was rooted in his criminal past, which included 25 arrests for crimes including the rape of a 13-year-old girl in 1997 when he was 19 and three stints in prison that left him unable to hold down a stable job.
“It all started in jail when he was around those people that used to have addictions,” said the Alvarez’s nephew. “And then he would come out they would put him in a shelter and that’s when it was just a cycle. That’s when it began.”
The killing comes on the heels of another fatal subway shooting in the Bronx that left one man dead and five wounded.
Kemper declined to say whether the three people arrested Monday were thought to have known the victim, citing the ongoing nature of the investigation. The chief said both Bronx murders were “isolated incidents.”
“We understand the riders’ concerns,” Kemper added. “Of course we do.”
An additional 1,000 police officers were added to patrols in the subway system this month after an uptick in property crimes in January, Kemper said.
“Crime was up 45% in January, driven by grand larcenies, driven by property grand larcenies — pickpockets,” said Kemper.
Overall crime this month has dropped 17% from the previous February, according to Kemper, who admitted crime remains up 13% over the previous year.
“Nothing to be happy about, we’re not. We’re focused. It’s progress,” the NYPD transit chief stated.
