The man fighting for his life after he was shot with his own gun during a bloody, caught-on-camera brawl on a Brooklyn subway train was part of a stick-up crew that robbed a livery cab driver in Queens more than a decade ago — a violent hold-up that still haunts the victim.
“They were trying to kill me that day,” the livery cab driver told the Daily News, stunned to learn that one of the three suspects involved in the 2012 robbery tried to shoot another man on a packed A train Thursday night, but was instead shot in the head.
“[There] was some sharp knife. He wanted to cut my throat. I just took my hand and covered my neck, so he just caught my hand.”
On Saturday, the 36-year-old gunman remained in critical condition after being shot twice in the head, once in the neck and once in the chest during the fight with a younger man, police said. The News is not naming the wounded man.
Gardiner Anderson for New York Daily News
Police respond after a person was shot at the Hoyt-Schermerhorn subway station in Brooklyn, New York City on Thursday, March 14, 2024.
The younger man who shot him was taken into custody at the Hoyt-Schermerhorn station in downtown Brooklyn following the 4:45 p.m. shooting that sent panicked straphangers running to the other side of the train car.
The Brooklyn District Attorney’s office declined to file charges against the younger man, claiming he acted in self defense.
The cab driver was rolling through Queens during the early-morning hours on Oct. 12, 2012 when the subway gunman and two other men flagged him down.
As the cabbie took them to Linden Blvd. and 177th St. in St. Albans, one of the suspects put a knife to his throat and started rifling through his pockets, said the cabbie, who wished not to be named.
“Just shoot him already!” one of the suspects screamed, according to court papers.
“I had to fight for my life,” the cabbie recalled. “I just put the car in drive and stepped on the gas, Vroom! Vrroom! Vroom!”
The cabbie nearly collided with a police vehicle near the corner, he said. The officers apprehended the three suspects and found the cabbie’s cellphone next to the subway gunman and the victim’s cash in his pocket. A second suspect had the cabbie’s ring, officials said.
“I was traumatized by that thing,” said the cabbie, who suffered a cut finger during the mugging.
His brush with death led him to give up the cabbie life and he’s now a security guard in Long Island.
“My wife, she can’t trust anybody,” he said. “That was too much. You’re driving, and someone tries to kill you.”
All three men were charged with first degree robbery and weapons possession. The subway gunman was convicted in 2014 and served five years in prison before he was put on parole, which ended in 2022.
During his parole hearing, the cab driver asked that he serve his full term.
“Let them be there for all the years they’re supposed to be there,” he said.
The subway gunman was living in Brooklyn in supportive housing before Thursday’s near-fatal clash on the Manhattan-bound train.
He was caught on video yelling at the man who ultimately shot him, screaming “You think it’s OK for you people to beat up cops?” — leading some to believe the victim mistook the other man for an asylum seeker like the ones accused of assaulting two police officers outside a Times Square shelter.
“He thinks you’re a migrant,” a woman can be heard screaming on the video, which was viewed by The News. “He thinks you’re an immigrant.”
The duo did not appear to know each other before the scuffle on the train, police said. As the train continued on, the two came to blows, with the gunman eventually holding the other one down with the weight of his body.
Shocking video shows a woman on the train why may have been with the younger man repeatedly striking the gunman in the back as he exclaims, “You stabbed me? You stabbed me in the back?”
After a civilian breaks up the brawlers, the younger man and woman back into a corner as blood appears to stain the back of the 36-year-old’s shirt, the video shows. He points at the woman and again accuses her of stabbing him — then pulls a handgun out of his jacket pocket.
Stunned commuters ran to the other side of the train, some kneeling on the ground so they wouldn’t be hit by a stray bullet.
Somehow, the younger man managed to disarm the older man and shoot him, cops said. The gun, a .380 Ruger, was recovered at the scene.
Prosecutors freed the younger man after “evidence of self-defense precludes us from filing any criminal charges against the shooter,” a spokesman for the Brooklyn District Attorney’s office said Friday.
Cops were still looking for the woman who stabbed the parolee.
On Saturday, he remained in a hospital bed in critical condition. He was not in police custody as investigators continues their investigation, an NYPD spokeswoman said.
If he survives, the parolee could be facing weapons possession charges, a police source with knowledge of the case said.
“He’s just a bad person,” the cabbie said.
