Raging loony at center of tragedy
Career criminal in Qns. friendly-fire fiasco obsessed with cops
The career criminal who sparked a friendly-fire police shooting in Queens that left a detective dead once showed up at a Brooklyn stationhouse wearing just his underwear and a makeshift cape, claiming to be a superhero looking to help police.
Christopher Ransom waltzed into the 71st Precinct stationhouse in Crown Heights wearing a red towel around his neck as a cape and offered his superhero services in September 2016, a video on YouTube shows.
“I love the law enforcement, man,” Ransom told cops as he handed out his business card. “You guys get paid for it. I’ll do it for free.”
At the time, cops responded with baffled laughter.
On Tuesday night Ransom allegedly drew an imitation pistol on two cops interrupting his holdup of a T-Mobile cell phone store in Richmond Hill, triggering a shooting that left Detective Brian Simonsen of the 102nd Precinct dead from friendly fire and an NYPD sergeant wounded.
Ransom, 27, is in police custody at New York-Presbyterian Hospital Queens after being shot by cops. He is in critical but stable condition.
After opening fire on Ransom, Simonsen was fatally shot in the chest by other officers arriving as backup at about 6:15 p.m. Sgt. Matthew Gorman was also hit by friendly fire, in the hip, and is expected to survive.
Ransom’s neighbors said he is a well-known eccentric.
“He stopped fire trucks before, police cars, wearing a Superman outfit,” said a worker at a store near Ransom’s Ocean Hill, Brooklyn, home.
Ransom had an ironic nickname: Detective. He got the street name after being arrested at least twice for impersonating a cop.
In his most recent bust, Ransom allegedly tried to get into the 77th Precinct stationhouse in Crown Heights through a locked rear door at 5 a.m. on Oct. 29, 2016. When he couldn’t gain entry, he jumped over a fence and went inside, authorities said.
“What’s up, guys?” he told officers before he was taken into custody.
He was wearing a SWAT vest and a badge that had the words “Super Police” on it when he was nabbed for attempted burglary and impersonating a cop.
A judge sentenced him to 20 days in jail after he pleaded guilty to misdemeanor criminal trespass, court records show.
He was arrested in 2010 for claiming to be a cop while he committed another crime.
Ransom was a suspect in phone store robberies dating to October, where he would flash what appeared to be a gun and take several phones. In one heist, he took 25 phones, officials said.
On Jan. 19, he allegedly pulled a gun on a 28-year-old employee and got away with cell phones and $850 from RSK3 Wireless on Rockaway Blvd. near 142nd Place in South Jamaica, Queens.
“He put the bag on the counter and told me to give him money,” store owner Veer Sheikh, 30, told the Daily News on Wednesday. “When he took out the gun it looked fake but I didn’t want to take any chances.” The suspect ran off with 12 iPhones.
Cops were looking to crack the Jan. 19 case and rereleased surveillance photos of the suspect asking the public’s help identifying him less than 24 hours before Ransom’s deadly confrontation with cops Tuesday.
Ransom has an extensive criminal history, with 25 arrests over the last decade including turnstile-jumping, resisting arrest and grand larceny. All but eight are sealed, sources said.
“He’s a thief,” one police source said. “A two-bit thief.”
Charges over the years also included drug possession and stealing handbags from a Marshall’s at the Gateway Plaza Mall and other stores, sources said.
In a bizarre case that made headlines in 2012, Ransom pleaded guilty to criminal impersonation for pretending to be a Kingsborough Community College student looking for an internship in Brooklyn Supreme Court.
He faked being a student to con “Hot Bench” star and retired Judge Patricia DiMg g allowing him into the courthouse, which he used to access nonpublic areas.
The scam was revealed when a court employee found him a judge’s chambers on Nov. 27, 2012.
Ransom did attend Kingsborough for a month in the fall of 2012 but he had left the college when he pretended to be an intern.
In 2015, he filed a lawsuit against a dozen cops he claimed falsely arrested him at the corner of Fulton St. and Kingston Ave. in BedfordStuyvesant, Brooklyn. He said in court papers he ran from cops hid in a bodega but the officers stormed the store with guns drawn.
As cops searched him, they groped his penis and testicles, he claimed. He ultimately withdrew his suit.
In 2016, he posted on Facebook that he had been accepted as a site director for a “play street’ run by the Police Athletic League.
“I don’t see how I qualify, but they say God takes care of babies and fools,” he wrote.
PAL officials said Ransom was hired that summer, but was fired within 13 days.
Ransom was shot multiple times during his confrontation with cops Tuesday.
Simonsen, the first line-ofduty fatality since 2017, leaves behind a wife.