The suspects nabbed for shooting an off-duty rookie cop during an attempted carjacking in Queens are teens with prior brushes with the law, police sources said Wednesday,
Jayare Robinson, 18, and Chad Collie, 19, are in custody at the 100th Precinct in the Rockaways and have not yet been charged.
The 22-year-old officer — the sixth cop shot so far this year, including two murdered in Harlem — was struck in the shoulder, then rushed by fellow cops to Jamaica Hospital, where he is in stable condition and is expected to recover.
Police released a photo Wednesday of the gun the suspects allegedly used to shoot the rookie as he was on his way to work.
Police also released a photo of the rear bumper of an unmarked police car pierced by a bullet when the suspects allegedly opened fire on responding officers before getting arrested.
Robinson, sources said, lives in East Flatbush and was wanted for questioning in a grand larceny. He was arrested in January 2021 for possession of stolen property worth more than $3,000. He was also charged with unauthorized use of a vehicle in the same incident, but that case was sealed.
Collie, sources said, lives in the Rockaways and has a prior juvenile report on his record for a March 2019 forcible touching incident in the same area. Collie was 16 at the time.
The rookie was on his way to work “to protect New Yorkers from criminals,” when he was shot, Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell said early Wednesday at a hospital press conference just hours before thousands of cops gathered at St. Patrick’s Cathedral for the funeral for Officer Wilbert Mora, who died Jan. 25, four days after he and his Officer Jason Rivera, were shot while responding to a call for help from a woman who said her son was threatening her. Rivera died that night..
Chief of Department Kenneth Corey said the Rockaways shooting happened about 10:18 p.m. at Beach Channel Drive and Beach 62nd St. in Averne.
The rookie was in his car, stopped at a traffic light, when the crooks approached, gaining his attention by knocking on the driver’s side window with their gun, Corey said.
The officer got out of the car, Corey said, and one of the suspects fired several times, striking the officer.
He was able to return fire but missed and the suspects ran off.
Nearby were uniformed cops from the 100th Precinct. They heard the shots, rushed to the scene, tended to the wounded officer and broadcast a description of the suspects over their radio.
Other uniformed officers confronted the suspects about three blocks away, at Beach Channel Drive and Beach 59th St. But as they got out of the car, Corey said, a shot was fired at them, striking their unmarked car in the rear bumper.
“I want to emphasize that,” Corey said at a hospital press conference. “These officers were being fired at and did not shoot back. Instead, they apprehended the two of them a short distance away without further incident.”
Mayor Adams also emphasized that restraint by the arresting officers and noted the crooks’ brazenness, willing to shoot those in “blue uniforms or blue jeans.”
“When these two individuals shot at a passenger driving the car they didn’t shoot at a police officer, they shot at a civilian,” Adams said. “And then to find out that they shot at police officers it sent a message. They had no regard [for] who they were trying to kill.”
The NYPD, at Adam’s direction, is in the process of forming a Neighborhood Safety Unit, comprised of officers in uniform and plainclothes and tasked with combatting the ongoing surge in gun violence.
Former Police Commissioner Dermot Shea in June 2020 disbanded the plainclothes Anti-Crime Unit. Cops assigned to anti-crime won high marks for getting guns off the street and developing an intimate knowledge of the city’s violent criminals but they were also criticized as overly aggressive and guilty of unjustified street stops and raids.
Many in anti-crime were subsequently assigned to the new Public Safety Unit. A sergeant and officer from that unit arrested the suspects accused of shooting the rookie Tuesday.
______
©2022 New York Daily News.
Visit nydailynews.com.
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
