‘Ain’t having this today!’
Brooklyn subway shooter raged over music, then turned on crossing guard
The gunman wanted for fatally shooting a beloved school crossing guard trying to break up a fight over noise on a Brooklyn subway train screamed “I ain’t having this today!” before sparking the fatal clash, police said Thursday.
Richard Henderson was trying to calm the stranger down when the suspect pulled a gun and shot him, NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said. Police have yet to find and question the man playing the music at the heart of the clash, Kenny says.
“Our shooter stands up, says, ‘I ain’t having this today!’ and attempts to get him to turn down the music,” Kenny said, describing the 8:15 p.m. killing Sunday. “The dispute then occurs, Mr. Henderson tries to intervene to calm the situation down, which results in him getting shot.”
Cops on Thursday released surveillance images of the suspect, who was sporting dreadlocks and wearing a black jacket with a black hood, as he fatally shot Henderson on a No. 3 train.
The big-hearted peacemaker was returning home from watching a football game on TV with friends when he came across the altercation, Kenny said.
Henderson, 45, boarded the train with one of his friends at the Pennsylvania Ave. station in East New York at about 8:15 p.m., cops said. The shooter boarded at the next stop, Junius St., cops said.
The shooter fired at Henderson twice as the train approached the Rockaway Ave. stop, cops said.
The shooter got off the train at Rockaway Ave. while Henderson’s pal fled to another car, apparently looking for help, the sources said.
Medics rushed Henderson to Kings County Hospital, where he later died.
At a vigil for Henderson on Wednesday, his wife Jakeba Dockery said he had always tried to be a peacemaker even when she begged him not to.
“He did a wonderful thing — he was doing what I asked him not to do,” Dockery said, remembering all the times she had asked him to mind his business when he was walking the streets. Her advice to him was always: “Please don’t intervene. Please keep going.”
“He said, ‘No, you have to help,’ and that’s what cost him his life,” she said Wednesday.
Henderson, a grandfather, was a beloved crossing guard at Avenues: The World School in Manhattan for 10 years, where his kind and generous demeanor was missed on Tuesday, with students, parents and staff alike mourning his loss.
“He was very important to so many kids,” Millen Magese, the mom of a first-grader who attends the school, told the Daily News.
“On Friday, he was just playing with him here,” Magese said of Henderson and her son. “But that’s what he does. He was not just a crossing guard.”
The gunman is described as Black with dreadlocks. Besides the black jacket and hood, he was wearing dark-colored pants and sneakers, cops said.
Kenny said that detectives “have not received as many tips as we would have liked” despite the fact “several occupants” were on the train at the time.
Detectives have used facial recognition software to identify a potential witness to the shooting, police said.
“We are still continuing with this investigation very vigorously,” Kenny said.
Anyone with information was asked to call Crime Stoppers at (800) 577TIPS. All calls will be kept confidential.