RAGE TWIST
Hit-run guy killed own pal after parking feud
THE VICTIM in a wild Queens hit-and-run was fatally mowed down by his own buddy after a violent brawl over a parking space, cops and a relative said Monday.
Victim Richardo Chattergoon even caught a ride with his pal to a South Ozone Park hookah bar in the same Hyundai sedan that would later crush him early Sunday on a narrow sidewalk.
“(Chattergoon) is the person in the car with him, a little twist there we didn’t know until this morning,” NYPD Chief of Detectives Robert Boyce said Monday.
Cops said Adrian Harry, 22, jumped the curb at Liberty Ave. and 129th St. and plowed his rental car into the spot where Chattergoon and several other bar patrons were gathered at about 5 a.m.
Harry’s fit of rage had been triggered minutes earlier during an argument over a parking spot, cops said.
He had argued with two men in a BMW, and allegedly stabbed one in the chest, the other in the stomach, authorities said.
Harry told detectives he whipped out a folding knife he normally uses to cut sheet rock, then wrapped a belt around his hand to protect it, prosecutors said.
“I started swinging. I swung at at least 10 people,” he said, according to a criminal complaint. “I struck about two or three.”
He then hopped into the Hyundai, jumped the curb and plowed into a group of people, including Chattergoon, who were standing outside XS NYC, authorities said.
Harry, who referred to Chattergoon as “Moses,” told cops he had no idea his buddy was part of the crowd, prosecutors said.
Harry had picked up Chattergoon, 23, in the same car hours earlier, for a night on the town, a relative of the victim’s said.
“Adrian came to pick him up that night, probably to go to a bar or something,” said the woman at Chattergoon’s Far Rockaway home who identified herself only as his aunt.
“The two men lived blocks apart and became friends after Chattergoon arrived in the U.S. from his native Guyana, according to the aunt.
“He only came to this country about a year ago,” she said.
Cops handcuffed Harry when he showed up at Jamaica Hospital — where the surviving victims had all been taken — for treatment of cuts on his hand.
Harry showed up at the hospital “with kind of a BS story, if you will, that he was stabbed someplace else. Detectives were quick to put him at the scene . . . and he admitted to the entire event,” Boyce said.
Harry was charged with murder, assault, reckless endangerment and criminal possession of a weapon.
His lawyer, Susan Silverman, said he was acting in self-defense.
“This kid has never been arrested. Someone attacked him and he defended himself,” she said. “There was no intention to mow anyone down. His sense was just to get out of there. It’s a tragic event.”
He was ordered held without bail Monday night.
Police also arrested a second man, Vernal McLean, who was suspected of using a hammer to bash in Harry’s car window, apparently after he saw his two friends get stabbed, authorities said.