A man in New York City was arrested on Saturday after going on a cross-borough shooting spree on an electric scooter.
Thomas Abreu, 25, was arrested and charged with murder and attempted murder for the ‘random’ shootings that took place across Brooklyn and Queens on Saturday.
‘This individual took it upon himself to shoot four innocent people, tragically killing one,’ Acting NYPD Commissioner Edward Caban said at a press conference.
The first shooting happened around 11.10am in East New York, Brooklyn.
NYPD Detectives Bureau Assistant Chief Joseph Kenny identified the victim as a 21-year-old male who was shot once in the shoulder while crossing the street.
He was transported to Brookdale Hospital and is expected to survive.
Just 17 minutes later, another person was reported shot outside a nail salon on Jamaica Avenue in Richmond Hill, Queens.
‘When officers responded to this location, they discovered a male, shot one time in the back,’ Kenney said.
The victim was initially identified only as an 86-year-old Hamoo Saeidi, a Yemeni-American immigrant who owned
Saeidi, who first immigrated to the US in 1962, was walking to his local mosque for morning prayers when he was attacked.
‘My heart is broken, my family is all devastated,’ Saeidi’s son Ahmed told the New York Post.
Just as patrol officers were responding to the murder in Richmond Hill, reports of another shooting further down Jamaica Avenue.
‘Numerous witnesses described a male on a scooter randomly firing at a group of people that were standing on a corner,’ Kenney said. Nobody was hurt in the third shooting.
Witnesses told police that the shooter fled north on his scooter. Just eight minutes later, another victim was shot in Kew Gardens, Queens.
The victim was identified as a 44-year-old male. He was shot a single time in the cheek, Assistant Chief Kenny said, and was rushed to Jamaica Hospital in critical condition.
About one minute after the fourth shooting, another victim was shot just blocks away.
This victim, a 63-year-old man, was shot a single time in the shoulder. He was hospitalized in stable condition.
Investigators recovered 9mm shell casings at each shooting scene.
Abreu was eventually spotted on his scooter by police officers in Jamaica, Queens, who took him into custody without incident around 1.00pm.
According to police, Abreu used an ‘illegal’ scooter without a license plate to move quickly across Brooklyn and Queens.
After his arrest, officers found a 9mm pistol inside the scooter equipped with an extended magazine.
Abreu grinned at photographers as he was perp walked from the NYPD’s 107th Precinct in Jamaica on Sunday afternoon.
Investigators are still trying to understand the motive behind the attacks.
‘At this time, we don’t know the motive,’ Kenny said. ‘It seems that his acts were random. If you look at the demographics and pedigree of the victims, they’re all different.’
He continued: ‘Video shows that he’s not targeting anybody, he’s not following anybody. As he’s driving on his scooter, he’s randomly shooting people.’
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