Points fake gun at cops in Qns., is fatally shot
House committee launches Columbia University antisemitism probe
A man pointing a fake gun was fatally shot in a confrontation with police in a Queens NYCHA building Monday morning, cops said.
NYPD Chief of Department Jeffrey Maddrey said that when officers arrived at a fourth-floor apartment at the Ocean Bay Apartments at about 10:30 a.m., a man let them into the apartment and they headed to a back bedroom and knocked, trying to talk to the suspect.
Mayor Adams said the 26-yearold suspect had been involved in an argument with his brother at the complex on Beach 51st St. near Elizabeth Ave in Edgemere.
A neighbor heard a “commotion” as police arrived at the apartment.
“A few moments later I heard a lot of yelling, shouting and then I heard, ‘He’s got a gun! He’s got a gun!’” said the man, who only wanted to be identified as Frank. “That’s when I heard three or four shots go off.”
“They had a conversation through the door for a few minutes, at which point the door opens up,” Maddrey said. “Our members go to step in through the door and then the male points a firearm at them. Our officers gave commands to drop the weapon and then our officer discharges his firearm.”
The officers, Maddrey said, “secured the suspect,” who was shot in the stomach They performed chest compressions as they cut his clothes to locate his wound and called for EMS, Maddrey said.
“When they brought him down he was unresponsive,” said Frank. “He looked like a kid.”
The suspect was rushed by medics to Jamaica Hospital in critical condition and died at 11:57 a.m.
The officers were taken to a hospital to be evaluated.
The wounded suspect’s gun (below) appears to be an imitation weapon, Maddrey said.
The suspect did not fire the weapon.
A nearby school was placed on lockdown for a short time.
A man accused of fatally shooting hip-hop icon Jam Master Jay bragged that he wanted to “kill him again” about two years after the murder, the suspect’s former roommate testified Monday.
Witness Cherubin Bastien, 65, told a federal jury he moved in with accused killer Karl Jordan in 2004, renting a room at Jordan’s father’s house in Queens for about $300 a month.
The murder of Jam Master Jay (photo below), real name Jason Mizell, came up in conversation twice during the nine months Bastien and Jordan lived together.
Jordan, who goes by the nickname “Little D,” is on trial with Ronald “Tinard” Washington in Brooklyn Federal Court for Mizell’s long-unsolved Oct. 30, 2002, murder.
Prosecutors allege that the duo barged into Mizell’s music studio on Merrick Blvd. in Hollis and Jordan shot the Run-DMC co-founder in the head in front of one of his close friends and his business manager, while three others heard the chaos from behind the closed door of a nearby control room.
Bastien said he was an everyday heroin user in 2004 and driving a cab in Queens when he moved in with Jordan. On almost every weekend, he drove Jordan and two others to upper Manhattan in a small Chevrolet Astro van.
It was on one of those trips, while Bastien was driving and Jordan sat in the front passenger seat, that the topic of Jam Master Jay came up, and Jordan said, “If I got to kill him, I’ll kill him again,” according to Bastien.
The DJ’s murder came up again when Bastien heard Jordan arguing with a woman in the driveway of their Hollis home, as Bastien stood by at his open second-floor window overlooking the street.
“He said, ‘I’ll do you like him, like Master Jay,’” Bastien said. Jordan’s lawyer, John Diaz, pressed Bastien on his heroin use, but he denied he was ever high.
“Heroin is very strong isn’t it?” asked Diaz.
“Quite,” said Bastien.
“It impairs you when you’re on it, isn’t that fair to say?” asked the lawyer.
“Not really,” Bastien answered.
Later, Bastien told the defense lawyer, “I never get high, sir. I get a fix.”
Bastien, who was deported to Haiti in 2007, said he was contacted by law enforcement officials in February 2021, and acknowledged he received about $1,000 a month in witness assistance money starting in May 2021 for rent, food and a phone so prosecutors could contact him.
He moved from Haiti to the Dominican Republic so investigators could visit, and got money he said was to renew his visa.
The jury also heard from one of Mizell’s close friends, Eric James, a former drug dealer living in the Midwest who was subpoenaed to testify.
“That was my best friend, that was my big brother,” said James. James said he was aware that Mizell — who along with the other members of Run-DMC performed anti-drug lyrics and starred in “Say No to Drugs” public service announcements — occasionally sold drugs.
At some point, because of a “drought” in the cocaine supply, James asked to be connected to Mizell’s supplier, “Unc.”
In 2001 or 2002, James spoke to Jordan about selling cocaine outside a barbershop near Mizell’s studio, while Mizell stood “2 feet away.”
James and Mizell also talked to him about getting 10 kilos of cocaine to set up shop in Baltimore, and complained about how “he gave Tinard some drugs and Tinard messed it up.”
Prosecutors say Jordan and Washington killed Mizell because he cut them out of a 10-kilo drug deal, and last week a Baltimore dealer testified that he refused to do business with Mizell if he was working with Washington.
A day or two before the murder, James recalled, Mizell was visiting him in the Midwest, and the DJ got a call while the two were playing video games.
“Somebody called and started yelling into the phone,” said James. Mizell began yelling back.
“I never heard him talk like that, so I paused the game and looked at him.”
James described his friend’s demeanor as “agitated” and said he had heard the name “Tinard” come up.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Artie McConnell asked James if he denied in press interviews that Mizell sold drugs, and he said he had.
“Just trying to protect his legacy, you know?” James said.
A U.S. House of Representatives committee is investigating allegations of antisemitism at Columbia University, according to a letter sent to university officials Monday.
Its launch is the latest in a series of probes by the Republican-led Education and the Workforce Committee into elite colleges’ ability to protect their Jewish students.
“We have grave concerns regarding the inadequacy of Columbia’s response to antisemitism on its campus,” Committee Chairwoman Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) wrote in the letter.
Foxx pointed to a “pattern of deeply troubling incidents and developments at Columbia,” including a Jewish student who was beaten with a stick by a peer over a dispute about Israeli hostage posters, and a swastika drawn in a campus bathroom.
“We are committed to combating antisemitism and all forms of hatred,” a university spokesman said in a statement.
“We have received the letter from Chairwoman Foxx and will cooperate fully with any investigation.”
The letter cited a December survey that found perceived incidents of antisemitism reported by Jewish students at Columbia were among the highest across dozens of campuses, according to the Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies at Brandeis University.
Columbia President Minouche Shafik, whose tenure began at the start of this school year, declined to testify at a House committee hearing in December, citing a prior commitment, the student newspaper Columbia Spectator reported. Two university presidents who participated in that hearing later resigned after backlash over their testimony and other factors.
Foxx asked Columbia to submit a number of documents and information by Feb. 26. Those include all reports of antisemitic incidents since 2021, disciplinary records and internal communications.
Columbia has been roiled by campus tensions since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel, and the Israeli military’s counteroffensive in Gaza.
In the weeks since the spring semester resumed, pro-Palestinian students say they were targeted with a sickening spray at a campus rally. The incident is under investigation, with the NYPD looking into two former Columbia students as suspects.
At least one Columbia student was arrested at a protest just outside the university’s gates over its response to the chilling episode.