The parolee with a loaded machine pistol shot dead by MTA police in Queens in December spoke calmly to the officers before screaming “What did I do?” as cops wrestled him to the ground trying to handcuff him, recently released body-worn camera footage shows.
“I didn’t do nothing! What did I do?” Bashe McDaniel, 52, screamed as the MTA police officers forced him onto his stomach and tried to get his hands behind his back near 91st Ave. and Sutphin Blvd. in Jamaica on Dec. 29.
The officers stopped McDaniel after a 19-year-old woman came forward, claiming that the parolee had groped her.
As McDaniel resisted, refusing to pull his hands out of his pockets, one of the two officers pulled out his taser and threatened to use it during the three-minute exchange.
“You’re going to get tased!” the officer screamed. “Put your hand behind your back! Let me see your hands!”
When McDaniel didn’t comply, the cop pressed the taser to his body, shocking him.
The officers had managed to slap one handcuff on McDaniel’s wrist when the Mac-10 in McDaniel’s jacket pocket went off, sending witnesses scrambling away, screaming. The butt of the gun was visibly sticking out of his pocket in the video of the struggle.
The officers back up with guns drawn, the video shows. When McDaniel flops over onto his back and appears to be reaching into his pocket, the officers fire off at least eight rounds at the ex-con while he lays on the sidewalk.
One of the officers falls as he backs up and takes aim at McDaniel.
“I’m good! You good?” one of the officers screams at the other. “I’m good!” the other cop responded, uninjured.
The machine pistol was found under his body as EMS rushed him to Jamaica Hospital, where he died a short time later. The cops were taken to an area hospital for trauma, but no other injuries were reported.
New York Attorney General Letitia James’ Office of Special Investigation released the body camera footage last week as they investigate the police-involved shooting.
Nearly a dozen people, including two small children, were walking by the officers when the shooting occurred, surveillance video recovered by the Daily News shows.
“People were running and trying to get away,” a worker at a nearby smoke shop told The News at the time. “There was a lot of shots fired. You don’t see a shooting like that over here much.”
McDaniel had done five stints in prison, mostly for weapons possession. He was convicted of manslaughter for killing someone in Greenwich Village in August 1988, according to court records. McDaniel was released from the Riverview Correctional Facility in Ogdensburg, N.Y., in September 2022 and was on parole until 2026, records show.
The exchange with McDaniel began when the woman entered MTA’s Long Island Rail Road headquarters next door to Jamaica Station at about 10 p.m. and claimed McDaniel had groped her, officials said after the shooting.
She said the stranger, who was wearing a baseball cap with the word “Killa” on it, had blocked her path and grabbed her breasts, officials said. She had managed to snap a photo of him before reporting the incident to police.
MTA cops went looking for the groper and quickly found McDaniel steps from Jamaica Station and LIRR headquarters.
McDaniel was wearing the “Killa” hat and had a distinctive varsity jacket with a letter “B” that the victim also described.
The parolee’s Mac-10 was equipped with a 30-round magazine, cops said.
One of the officers involved in the shooting has been an MTA police officer for three years, an MTA police source said. The other has been with the MTA police for a year. Both were assigned to District 3 at the Jamaica station and neither officer had fired their guns before during their time with the MTA.
Since being formed 26 years ago, MTA cops have fired their weapons on just five occasions, agency officials said. This is the third time an MTA police shooting turned fatal.
