An ex-con shot his super during a crazed quarrel, then opened fire on responding NYPD cops before shooting himself in his Queens apartment Wednesday, police and witnesses said.
The gunman fired a shot from his sixth-floor apartment window at police on 54th St. near 31st Ave. in Astoria at about 10:55 a.m., moments after he shot his building’s super during an argument, police said.
After the shot was fired out the window, cops confronted the gunman in his sixth-floor hallway, firing three shots at him but missing. The gunman ran into his apartment and locked himself inside, sparking a three-hour standoff.
At some point during the standoff, the gunman shot himself in the chest, NYPD Chief of Department Jeffery Maddrey said.
NYPD Emergency Service Unit cops put a small camera under the door and found the gunman was “lying on the floor yelling for help,” Maddrey said.
“We got him, get him to release the gun that is still in his hand, took him into custody and took him to a local hospital,” Maddrey said.
The gunman, an ex-con, was not immediately identified. Criminal charges against him were pending.
The drama began when the gunman was on the second floor of the apartment building arguing with the 48-year-old building super, witnesses said.
Building resident Avatar Singh said the gunman was holding the elevator door open as he argued with the victim, so Singh and his wife Jassi had to walk down the stairs from the fourth floor.
When they reached the lobby, multiple shots rang out, Jassi Singh said.
“We heard ‘Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam!'” she recalled. “My husband said the elevator must be broken, but then the super is running down the stairs behind us yelling, ‘Call the ambulance!'”
A moment later, Jassi saw blood pooling underneath the super’s white shirt.
“I said, ‘Oh my God, this is a gun shooting,'” she said. “I said [to the super], ‘Please don’t close your eyes’ because … you know.”
Jassi and Avatar called 911 and helped the super out of the building as the gunman ran up to his sixth-floor apartment.
As cops arrived, the suspect stuck his head out a window and fired a shot, Maddrey said. Nobody was struck.
“He was shooting out the window onto the street,” Avatar Singh said. “The cops were screaming, ‘Go over there! Go over there!'”
Cops ran into the building and spotted the shooter, gun in hand, on the sixth floor, Maddrey said.
“One of the officers discharged his weapon three times and the [shooter] ran back into his apartment,” the chief said.
During the standoff, cops evacuated residents of neighboring apartments, Maddrey said.
“We knew we had him, but we had to worry about other people,” he said. “We had to worry about bullets coming through walls. Bullets coming from windows.”
NYPD negotiators and ESU cops tried to get the gunman to surrender, but he wouldn’t relent, Maddrey said, adding that drones were flown by his apartment window to keep tabs on him during the standoff.
It was not immediately clear how badly the gunman was wounded when he shot himself, cops said. The super he shot was rushed to Elmhurst Hospital Center, where he was expected to recover.
A building resident who gave his name as Jeffrey said the gunman “did not get along with the super.”
But the super “was cool with this guy. He knew he had problems with him, and he tried to stay away from it.”
With Sheetal Banchariya
