Wild West Side
Cops fire at maniac drug-susp driver
A drug suspect tried to run down authorities who stopped him in his Jeep near the West Side Highway Thursday, drawing gunfire, police said.
The mayhem began when a narcotics task force tried to pull the Jeep over on 12th Ave. near W. 50th St. in Midtown just before noon.
The task force, comprised of state police and federal Drug Enforcement Administration agents, had been following the suspect as they wrapped up an investigation into a heroin operation in Riverdale, the Bronx.
“He was part of a largescale heroin op in the Bronx distributing heroin all over the New York City area,” DEA Associate Special Agent Timothy Foley told reporters at the scene.
Officers flanked the jeep as one cop banged on the window demanding the driver surrender.
But the suspect gunned the engine and sped off, striking two cars, including a Toyota Rav 4 driven by Marco Barrenichea.
“I was coming to pick up my granddaughter from school,” Barrenichea, 64, said. “The police pull him over and they’re yelling, ‘Get out of the car! Get out of the car!’”
“OK! OK...relax!” the Jeep driver said, Barrenichea recalled.
“The police try to reach into the car, but he put up the windows and drove away,” Barrenichea said. “He collided with the back of my car. I was three cars up, behind people stopped at the light.”
Officers fired at least three times at the Jeep, hitting no one, Barrenichea said. The Jeep driver then hit another vehicle — this one with a family inside — before making a U-turn.
“There was a bang where he hit a car,” witness Frank Boruch said. “Then there was a pop and a pause and two shots after that.
“All the bystanders started running,” said Boruch, 24, a bus driver from Pennsylvania. “When you hear gunfire, you don’t run to it.
“It’s kind of crazy,” he added. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Once he made the U-turn, the Jeep driver “drove up the highway with two police cars chasing him,” Barrenichea said.
He apparently was able to elude capture at the scene.
Stunned witnesses called 911, but when the NYPD arrived neither the driver of the Jeep nor the agents and cops who tried to stop him were around, sources said.
The driver was ultimately apprehended near the alleged drug operation on 262nd St. and Broadway in the Bronx, a short distance from the Westchester border, officials said.
After nabbing the driver, who is a resident of Pennsylvania, cops raided the drug location and arrested two others.
A stretch of the West Side Highway between W. 42nd and W. 57th St. was briefly closed to traffic as the investigation continued.