A Manhattan parking attendant who was shot twice while confronting a suspected burglar at his business has been charged with murder after seizing the gun from him and using it to shoot the suspect.
The night worker, Moussa Diarra, 57, was charged with assault and criminal possession of a weapons charge in the incident on Saturday, which occurred around 5:30 am.
The attendant saw a man looking out the car windows on the second floor of the West 31st Street garage, the New York Post reported.
Thinking the man was stealing, the attendant pulled the suspect out and asked him what was inside his bag.
However, instead of loafing or cooperating, the man pulled out a gun.
The incident took place in a downtown parking lot on West 31st Street in Manhattan.
Both men, including the one who acted in self-defense, have been charged with attempted murder.
Diarra lunged for the gun and it went off, leaving him with a gash to his stomach and a scratch on his ear before he could point the firearms at the suspected robber and shoot him in the chest.
The culprit, 59-year-old Charles Rhodie, was also charged with attempted murder, assault and criminal possession of a weapon, as well as robbery, according to police.
The charges against Diarra have left many confused and angry, as they recall the case against Manhattan bodega clerk José Alba, who was charged with murder after a fatal July 1 confrontation with an angry customer who accosted him. .
A friend of Diarra’s family was furious: ‘That’s self-defense. The guy tried to steal his business. Why does the district attorney want to charge him with attempted murder? said Mariame Diarra, unrelated to the aide.
It’s there for security. That’s literally his job, to defend his business… He takes his job seriously… The attempted murder charge has no place there,’ he continued. ‘He [the robber] came looking for him at work with his gun, he [the attendant] you have to defend yourself.
A person who works at another garage near the Moynihan train station was also shocked and disturbed by the charges:
Are you kidding. That’s an April Fool’s Day joke, right? asked the person. ‘How can you arrest a working man for defending himself?’
Last July, it took six days before Alba was released from jail on Rikers Island and Alvin Bragg dropped the murder charge after a public pressure campaign to do so.
The publication reported that a police officer told of the attempted murder charge said: “People like Alvin Bragg have made this city unsafe and this worker is a victim fighting back.”
Another officer joked that the thief would have been better off getting caught shoplifting because Bragg probably wouldn’t have pressed any kind of lasting charges.
“The irony is that if he had robbed the garage and got caught, Bragg would have let him go, but now he wants to charge them both,” he said.
Both the assistant and the alleged thief live in Manhattan and were transported to Bellevue Hospital in stable condition following the incident.
The statistics paint a bleak picture of the city’s efforts to tackle crime that has skyrocketed since the pandemic.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has been accused of being soft on crime and failing to prosecute criminals who are increasing crime statistics in New York City.
An officer who learned of the charges against Diarra said: “People like Alvin Bragg have made this city unsafe and this worker is a victim fighting back.”
Last week, Manhattan District Attorney Bragg oversaw the impeachment of former President Donald Trump, a move many have called spectacular political overreach by an office that often seeks to water down the charges, not amplify them.
Bragg’s complacency when it comes to street criminals is part of the reason New York City’s crime rate continues to rise despite repeated promises from the City Council that the Adams administration is working to control the problem. .
Crime statistics released in January paint a bleak picture of the city’s efforts to tackle crime that has skyrocketed since the pandemic.
Data shows that rapes, robberies and assaults increased from last year, reaching levels not seen in decades in both 2020 and 2021.
Rapes, which spiked in 2020 when the streets were empty and unemployment was rampant due to unrest caused by the coronavirus, rose 7 percent, with more than 120 occurring this year than last.
Theft, meanwhile, rose an astonishing 20 percent, despite recent moves by Adams, 62, to increase police presence throughout the city.
Meanwhile, assaults and robberies across the city show an equally steep increase, with serious crimes up 12 percent (26,039 incidents this year compared to 22,835 last year) and burglaries a alarming 25 percent.
All other crime categories, including grand theft and motor vehicle theft, showed similar increases except for murder, despite the start of the pandemic now being nearly three years ago.