A 17-year-old surrendered to police on Thursday, October 22, and was charged with murder in the fatal shooting of security guard Darrel Rodriguez, 26, on a crowded Midtown subway platform.
Police said the teenager turned himself in accompanied by his attorney after detectives had spent days tracking him down. His name was not released because of his age. He faces charges of second-degree murder, criminal possession of a weapon and criminal possession of a loaded weapon.
Rodriguez was shot in the chest just after 12:20 p.m. on Saturday, October 17, on the northbound E train platform at the Seventh Avenue and West 53rd Street station, a busy Midtown stop served by the B, D and E trains. Police said a dispute between the two began on the platform, spilled into a subway car and then back onto the platform before the gunfire erupted. Rodriguez was taken to Bellevue Hospital, where he was pronounced dead just after 1 p.m.
Riders who were in the station described panic as the shots rang out in the middle of the day. One rider said she and her daughter had just boarded a train and sat down when she heard a shot, then at least three more, as passengers rushed for the exits in what she called a mass exodus.
Police said Rodriguez and the teenager did not know each other before the shooting. In the days after the killing, investigators released a photo of a person of interest last seen fleeing north on Seventh Avenue wearing a red tracksuit, a black vest and a face mask and carrying a backpack — an outfit whose red-and-black colours led to the suspect being nicknamed after a comic-book character as the manhunt played out.
Rodriguez, of University Heights in the Bronx, worked the front desk as a security guard at a Manhattan building and was believed to be heading home when he was killed. He had no criminal record in New York City. Neighbours and relatives described him as a quiet, stand-up young man — a“beautiful kid” — who had taken on the care of his ailing father.
He leaves behind two brothers, including his fraternal twin Derick, who serves in the military in Texas and is returning home to help bury him. “It’s like a black hole in your heart,” Derick said of losing his twin. “It is grief, but it is something deeper because this is your half.”
The killing has renewed the fight over subway safety. Rider advocates called for a ban on face coverings in the transit system and for riders to have to pull down masks at the fare gates and on platforms. “Our elected officials, our city, everyone has failed us and you know who’s suffering? All these poor riders like me,” said Charlton D’Souza of Passengers United. Transit officials said the agency coordinated with police from the earliest minutes of the shooting, including retrieving video from platform and train-car cameras, and backs efforts to prohibit the concealed carrying of firearms in stations, trains and buses.
Police said there have now been six killings in the subway system this year, compared with four at the same point last year, even as gun arrests underground have hit a record number. The investigation into Saturday’s shooting remains active, and anyone with information can call the NYPD Crime Stoppers hotline at 1-800-577-TIPS.
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