NYC jarred by two more high-profile killings

New York City was stunned again this week by two stark instances of violence — a police officer was shot and killed, and a commuter was fatally struck after being pushed in front of a subway train.

The shooting happened around 5:50 pm Monday in the Far Rockaway section of Queens, police said, after Officer Jonathan Diller and his partner encountered a vehicle illegally parked at a bus stop.

As they approached, a man inside the vehicle shot Diller below his bulletproof vest, said Police Commissioner Edward Caban. Diller's partner returned fire and wounded the suspect.

Diller, who comes from a family of police officers, was taken to Jamaica Hospital Medical Center but could not be saved, officials said. He had been with the NYPD for three years, was married and had a 1-year-old son, the commissioner said on X.

"We lost one of our sons today, and it is extremely painful," Mayor Eric Adams said Monday, speaking at the hospital where the officer died.

The police department's chief of detectives, Joseph Kenny, said Diller and his partner had initially tried to order the vehicle's driver and passenger out of the car, which was stopped on a busy, narrow street in a commercial district.

"He was asked to leave the car," Kenny said of the alleged gunman, identified as Guy Rivera, 34, a passenger in the car. Rivera has 21 prior arrests, and was imprisoned for five years on drug charges, according to the New York Post. He was released in 2021 and off parole the next year.

"He was given a lawful order numerous times to step out of the car. He refused. And when the officers took him out of the car, rather than stepping out of the car, he shot our officer."

The driver of the car, Lindy Jones, 41, has been arrested at least 14 times, including for an attempted murder, for which he was sentenced to a decade behind bars, the Post reported.

Neither man had been charged in the case as of Tuesday.

"We have a real recidivism problem with these two individuals," the mayor said Tuesday.

Kenny said Diller "stayed in the fight" after being wounded and tried to disarm the shooter.

"The gun hit the ground. And as the perpetrator was still reaching for it, this cop was able to grab it, although he was still shot," Kenny said.

Another witness, Deon Peters, told the Post he saw Diller on the ground.

"He was moving, he was saying 'I'm hit, I'm hit,'" Peters said.

"Can I say it any clearer? It is the good guys against the bad guys," said Adams, a former city transit police officer. "And these bad guys are violent. They carry guns. And the symbol of our public safety, which is that police uniform, they have a total disregard for."

Patrick Hendry, president of the Police Benevolent Association of New York, expressed his anger.

"These attacks on New York City police officers have to end right now," he said. "We have a family upstairs that's devastated. We have police officers in this hallway who lost a brother."

In the other deadly incident, Jason Volz, 54, of the Bronx was pushed onto the tracks inside an East Harlem subway station in Upper Manhattan shortly before 7 pm Monday, police said. The operator of the oncoming train was unable to stop, and Volz was killed, police said.

The suspect, Carlton McPherson, 24, was arrested on a murder charge, a police spokesperson said. McPherson was awaiting arraignment in Manhattan criminal court on Tuesday.

The suspect "timed it perfectly" with an oncoming train and "pushed with all his might", a witness told the Post on Tuesday.

"And as the train was approaching, he just snuck behind the guy and just cocked back and pushed him with, like, all his might," Andriel Recio, 28, told the Post. "The guy just like flew onto the tracks."

Daquan McPherson told the Post that his younger brother "just got out of the hospital two weeks ago. We begged them to keep him, but they said he wasn't a threat to himself or others so they couldn't keep him and they let him go.

"In New York City, the mentally ill have two options — either they go to jail or do something that lands them in the newspaper," he said.

Monday's fatal push happened on the same day that city officials announced a plan to send 800 more police officers into the subway system to stem fare evasion.

Also on Monday, a man was stabbed multiple times on a subway train in a dispute over smoking, police said. A suspect was arrested.

Adams said on Tuesday said that although acts of violence like the fatal shove fuel the perception of lawlessness, subway crime is down nearly 6 percent since 2022.

"We hear this over and over again: The city's out of control. It's just not true," Adams said at a City Hall news conference.

Agencies via Xinhua contributed to this story.