NY worker arrested for fatally shooting off-duty correction officer
Queens NY Sept 17 2018
Police on Sunday arrested an MTA bus maintenance worker they said fatally shot an off-duty correction officer in Queens in apparent case of road rage.
30-year-old Queens resident Gifford Hunter faces multiple charges, including second-degree murder and criminal possession of a weapon.
Police said Jonathan Narain, 27, was found parked at the corner of 103rd Ave. and 120th St. in Richmond Hill around 1:40 a.m. Friday, slumped over in the driver’s seat of his car with a gunshot wound to his left temple.
Police said the two had a brief conversation before Hunter shot Narain once, but it’s not clear what they had argued about.
“Our victim was in a vehicle, and he was making a U-turn, and that’s when the first initial encounter occurred with the motorcyclist,” NYPD Chief of Investigations William Aubry said Friday. “The second encounter occurred right behind me here, where the motorcyclist pulled up beside the vehicle, and it was short exchange of what we believe was a conversation, very, very short, only seconds, and the shot was fired.”
Police said Narain was on his way to his job at Rikers Island.
The Correction Officers Benevolent Association (COBA), the union for city correction officers, had been offering a $10,000 reward for information leading to an arrest and conviction in the case.
“The men and women of the COBA are extremely grateful to the NYPD for their relentless efforts in tracking down and arresting the killer of Correction Officer Narain. It’s now time for the Queens District Attorney to prosecute this murderer to the fullest extent of the law,” Elias Husamudeen, the president of the union, said in a statement.
The union said Narain, who had been a correction officer since January 2016, was assigned to the Anna M. Kross Center on Rikers and had a brother who is an FDNY firefighter.
