COPS: SNOOPER CHOKED SUPER
Private eye nabbed for Qns. run-in
A high-profile private eye repeatedly accused of tampering with murder witnesses was arrested for choking the superintendent of a Queens building, officials said Friday.
Manuel Gomez, 52, was charged with strangulation, criminal trespass and harassment for throttling the building super inside a 40th St. building in Long Island City on Thursday.
The super told police that he had spotted Gomez in the building earlier in the day. When he saw him again at 6:45 p.m., he asked Gomez for identification, sources said.
Gomez said he was a private investigator, but wouldn’t show him any ID. He became combative when the super asked him to leave and choked the man.
The victim suffered some bruises to his neck, but was not otherwise harmed, authorities said.
This is Gomez’s first arrest in New York City, police said. His arraignment in Queens Criminal Court was pending Friday.
Gomez made headlines last year when the Bronx district attorney’s office demanded he turn over all video, audio and notes from witness interviews he conducted while defending Brian Solano, the accused triggerman in the 2014 killing of Willie Lora, the brother of a high-ranking Trinitarios gang member.
Bronx prosecutors accused Gomez of helping Solano tamper with witnesses.
“It is our position that Mr. Gomez assisted him in those endeavors,” Bronx Assistant District Attorney Christine Scaccia said during a Dec. 17, 2018 court appearance.
Solano, 25, spent three years on Rikers Island and a brief stint in an upstate prison while awaiting trial. But a judge ordered him released without bail in October 2017, after Gomez found witnesses who claimed police coerced them to finger Solano as Lora’s killer.
In November 2018, Solano’s mother, Wendy Martinez, was shot dead through her apartment door peephole. No one has since been arrested.
The case against Solano is still pending in Bronx Criminal Court.
Queens prosecutors also questioned Gomez’s investigative tactics after he was accused by a Queens judge in 2018 of coercing a gang-murder witness into not testifying.
In a bombshell court filing, Judge Kenneth Holder said Gomez “made false assertions” when grilling Erika King about her claims that suspect Ajaya Neale killed a reputed Bloods member in 2014.
Neale, 30, was charged with murder, weapons possession and reckless endangerment for the fatal shooting of 24-year-old Joel Rashko at a baseball game in Roy Wilkins Park in St. Albans. He was acquitted at trial last June.
Gomez also helped get charges dismissed against Pedro Hernandez, the Bronx teen who became a poster boy for bail reform after spending more than a year on Rikers Island on a gun charge because he couldn’t pay bail.
And Gomez found almost two dozen people who claimed they were falsely arrested by NYPD Detective David Terrell — but all of the cases filed against the detective except one have since been dropped, mostly for lack of evidence.