BRUTES PREY AT JFK
Shot mom still critical Cops hunt pair in fifth vicious robbery near airport
THE NEAR-FATAL shooting of a gutsy Baltimore mom in a Queens hotel parking lot robbery was the fifth — and most violent — in a series of brazen local holdups, cops said.
Andrea Koller, 53, was in critical but stable condition Friday after getting shot by a bandit wearing a ski mask who pistol-whipped her and her daughter during the attack outside the Hampton Inn.
Koller, author of an impassioned anti-gun letter to the Baltimore Sun in 2013, slugged the armed robber in a Thursday night scuffle that ended with a gunshot tearing through her right shoulder, sources said.
Koller’s 93-year-old father said his daughter’s brave stand against the gunman was typical of her Maryland mettle.
“Knowing Andy, we’re not surprised that she would do that,” James Koller told the Daily News. “Andy is passionate in everything she does. She has a very forceful personality.”
The four previous attacks occurred near Kennedy Airport between Dec. 28 and Jan. 9, with three inside Queens hotel parking lots — including one at the same Hampton Inn, cops said. The victims in those cases were a combination of tourists and New Yorkers.
“I think it’s random,” said NYPD Chief of Detectives Robert Boyce of the perps’ choice of targets.
The attacks occurred at different times, and the two men in the first robbery stole the victim’s wallet and his black Mercedes-Benz, cops said.
The shooter and the getaway driver in the latest holdup remained on the loose Friday.
Andrea Koller and daughter Meredith Stifter drove up from Maryland to spend the night before the Lehigh University junior was due to take a flight Friday for a semester abroad in Cape Town, South Africa.
The pair pulled into the parking lot opposite Kennedy Airport about 8:30 p.m. Thursday, with Koller heading into the hotel lobby as her daughter waited outside in the passenger’s seat, police sources said.
A video captured a white Volkswagen Jetta with yellow New York plates tailing them into the lot before parking behind their 2007 Hyundai, police sources said.
With the 20-year-old daughter alone in the car, the masked robber yanked open the driver’s side door and jumped in alongside Stifter, police said.
“Give me all your money,” he demanded — only to find the woman had no cash. Sources said the gunman stole four rings off Meredith’s fingers before bashing her in the head with his black pistol and waiting for her mom to return.
“If your mother doesn’t have any money, I’m going to shoot you,” he warned the undergraduate student.
When Koller exited the 13-story South Ozone Park hotel, the robber bolted from the car and came right at her, cops said.
She scuffled with the man as he tried to snatch her purse, and Koller screamed in the darkness when the bandit pistol-whipped her. After she slugged the gunman, he squeezed off a shot, police said.
The bandit jumped into the waiting Jetta with his getaway driver and sped off, sources said.
Koller’s husband Terry and her son Damian were at her Jamaica Hospital Medical Center bedside Friday morning, joined by Meredith.
The college student went to see her mom after getting four surgical staples at Queens Hospital Center to close her head wound. “I really don’t have much to say,” Terry Stifter told The
News. “I’ve got a lot
of other things on my mind.”
NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton (inset l.) described the shooting of an outof-town mom as an anomaly.
“This is America,” Bratton said. “We have 300 million guns and a lot of bad people.”
The mother’s pocketbook, with her iPhone, was also stolen in the robbery — but the suspects ditched the trackable device on the Van Wyck Expressway, police sources said.
Dad James said Friday that Andrea Koller was “expected to be conscious later this morning. We would hope to speak with her later.”
James Koller said his daughter, a Baltimore public school teacher, was a liberal and an activist who worked with children and the minority community in the city.
Three years ago, she wrote a letter to the Baltimore Sun decrying gun violence and the gun show loophole that allows criminals to easily acquire weapons.
Flight attendant Dale Smith, 40, checked into the Hampton Inn after a flight cancellation in advance of the weekend storm.
“It’s sad what happened,” said Smith. “Kind of nerve-wracking, you know? ... It’s just kind of scary.”