A Bronx dad of two was shot outside his apartment building over a senseless beef between one of his friends and the gunman, according to the victim’s family.
Richard Spigner Jr., 28, was waiting for a Chinese food delivery when he was shot in the face and chest on Rodman Place near West Farms Road on Dec. 21.
“He was very outgoing,” Spigner’s older sister Tasia Legrand told the Daily News. “He was a people person. And that’s why I feel like he got killed. Everybody to him is like his friend.”
The day of the killing, Spigner had just come back from his mother’s apartment and was chatting up an older man in the lobby of his girlfriend’s building when the gunman came in, asking questions about one of Spigner’s friends.
“[The killer] was having a problem with my brother’s friend,” Legrand explained. “They’re beefing over neighborhoods, this is what the detective said. The killer is from Chicago, my brother’s friend is from Baltimore.”
When Spigner told the killer he wasn’t involved in their beef, the gunman asked for Spigner’s phone to call the pal, Legrand said — and the phone conversation got heated.
Spigner stepped outside for a moment to move a double-parked car and when he came back, the killer was still talking on his phone, Legrand said,.
The older man who Spigner was initially talking with in the lobby tried to grab the phone from the killer, and that’s when things turned violent, Legrand said.
The gunman started shooting and the older man dived to the ground. But the shooter kept pulling the trigger and hit Spigner, his sister said — conveying what she’d heard from witnesses on the scene and police.
Cops have made no arrests.
“The killer is no stranger to my brother. My brother smokes weed. So does the killer. They’ve smoked weed before together,” Legrand said. “My brother is innocent. but he’s not an innocent bystander. This person upclose range shot my brother in four deadly places. He wanted to kill my brother. … He wanted my brother to die.”
Rodman Place and West Farms Road in the Bronx. (Google)
Spigner had six unsealed arrests on his record, cops say. The most recent was in the Bronx in July 2022 for criminal obstruction of breathing.
Legrand learned of the shooting when her brother’s girlfriend called her, worried. “She said, ‘Sis, they’re saying someone just got shot in front of my building and Junior’s not answering the phone. I’m about to go downstairs and see,’ ” Legrand recalled.
“They don’t live in the greatest neighborhood. Somebody always gets shot over there. … I always see it on the Citizen app and everything so I’m just trying to understand why it would be my brother.”
Five minutes later the girlfriend called back crying and told her, ‘It’s him! Junior got shot!’”
“I was still praying this whole time. … I was like, ‘Please God … don’t let that be my brother. Please God, please. I cannot deal with that,’ ” Legrand said.
A friend called a Lyft car to take Legrand the scene.
“I just fell and I fell in my brother’s blood. It’s so much blood. They were still putting caution tape up. There was blood everywhere,” Legrand said.
“I’m never gonna forget. I was still having those chest pains and I couldn’t talk. I was crying, but nothing was coming out. I ran to the corner because I seen so many people outside. I was just screaming, ‘Who shot my brother? Who shot my brother?’ ”
An NYPD detective came up to her and took her to St. Barnabas Hospital, where Spigner died.
Spigner had two sons, ages 3 and 1, and had started a new job at a nursing home just days before his death, Legrand said.
“My brother was a great person overall,” she said. “He was very smart. Very book smart. He also was an artist. He drew pictures for his kids and drew pictures of them and teddy bears and stuff.”
He also made music and wrote rap lyrics about his life.
“He would play his music when we get in his car, he wanted us to hear it,” Legrand said. “It sounded good.”
“He just was a great dad,” she added. “I was his baby-sitter. I was a great aunt to his kids and I’m still gonna be.”
