NYPD tried to hide MS-13 gangster accused of subway slaying
He’s an MS-13 gangster and illegal immigrant accused of murdering a rival on a subway platform— but you wouldn’t even recognize him on the street if the NYPD had its way.
Cops bent over backward Tuesday to shield alleged killer Ramiro Gutierrez from public scrutiny after his arrest for Sunday’s broad-daylight slaying in Queens — going so far as to feed reporters bogus information about his whereabouts and claim ignorance on his illegal status hours before President Trump’s State of the Union Addressrenewing his request for a border wall.
Gutierrez, 26, has been in custody since Monday for the execution-style killing of Abel Mosso, 20, in front of horrified straphangers.
But cops waited until 4 a.m. Tuesday to announce that he had been formally charged.
Then they called reporters Tuesday afternoon to say that he would be walked out of the 115th Precinct station house at 4 p.m. — only to sneak him out a back door by 2 p.m. en route to a courthouse in Queens.
It would have been the public’s first chance to get a good look at the accused killer — had The Post not already put him on the front page Tuesday thanks to law enforcement sources.
Gutierrez shot Mosso “multiple times in the face” following a scuffle over a gun that spilled from a No. 7 train onto the 90th Street station platform in a “gang-related” incident, according to NYPD Chief of Detectives Dermot Shea.
He had at least nine previous arrests that included four felonies.
Police claimed that they suddenly sped up the transfer of the suspect from the precinct to court at the behest of Queens DA Richard Brown’s office. The move was made after Gutierrez lawyered up and a DA employee said to haul him in, a police source said.
But two DA sources told The Post that they were unaware of any such request from their office.
The NYPD ignored questions about why it appeared to be protecting Gutierrez.
“What is this nonsense?” an NYPD spokesman said to The Post when asked about the issue.
Mayor Bill de Blasio’s office said it was all the NYPD’s call and declined to say whether the department made the right decision in shielding Gutierrez.
“We weren’t involved in the mechanics of the defendant’s transfer, and we don’t have any comment on it,” City Hall spokesman Eric Phillips said.
Police wouldn’t even say Tuesday whether Gutierrez is in the country legally.
“I do not have any information regarding immigration status — it’s not something we collect,” Shea said of immigration-status data during an unrelated press conference Tuesday.
US Immigration Customs and Enforcement officials confirmed Gutierrez is “illegally present” in the US.
“He entered without inspection at an unknown date and time. A detainer was placed on him today,” an ICE official told The Post.
Gutierrez’s NYPD rap sheet goes back to at least 2010, when he received a summons for disorderly conduct, according to sources.
He’s been collared on at least nine misdemeanors and four felonies, including for drug possession, sources said, noting that five of his arrests are sealed.
Gutierrez was out on $2,500 bail for felony conspiracy charges when he allegedly killed Mosso.
He was arrested last Dec. 11, and by Dec. 13 he had pleaded “not guilty” and posted bail, records show.
The arrest put him on ICE’s radar, but the agency was not aware he was in the US illegally until Tuesday, agency officials said.
White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders seized on Mosso’s killing to make the case for tighter border security.
“These things should not be happening,’’ she said Tuesday on CNN.
“We know that the crime and the drugs and those things drastically stop if you have real border security, and that includes a wall.’’
Additional reporting by Stephanie Pagones and Nolan Hicks
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment