Last weekend Andrew Abdullah allegedly shot and killed Goldman Sachs employee Daniel Enriquez in a New York subway. Now, the 25-year-old has turned himself in thanks to negotiations held by a minister and his attorneys, according to police sources and his lawyers.
According to the New York Post, Abdullah was hit with second-degree murder and second-degree criminal possession of a weapon.
“I’m glad for the city,” the slain man’s partner Adam Pollack said Tuesday after learning of the bust. “It doesn’t change anything for me, though. I don’t get any relief.”
Abdullah decided to turn himself in via a Brooklyn bishop but instead was nabbed by cops at the Legal Aid Society offices in Manhattan when the talks were going on, police sources told the publication.
Abdullah had been on the lam since the Sunday morning shooting on the train’s last car.
“A killer is off our streets,” Mayor Eric Adams said.
Yesterday, Tuesday, May 24, NYPD Chief of Detectives James Essig said that the gunman was “pacing back and forth inside the train car muttering to himself” before the shooting.
“The only distinguishable words heard were, ‘no phones,’” Essig said. “The male suddenly and without any prior interactions or provocation walked up to our victim…and shot him one time in the chest.”
Initially identified as a person of interest by sources, Abdullah’s lawyers complained about how he was treated while negotiations were still happening.
“Before Andrew Abdullah could voluntarily surrender himself to the local precinct, he was needlessly ambushed out front of our Manhattan trial office by City Marshals, denied of his opportunity to first consult with counsel,” legal aid said in a statement.
“Since last night, we have been actively speaking with the New York Police Department and the New York County District Attorney’s Office to negotiate his surrender, and what transpired today was completely inappropriate and unwarranted given those conversations,” it said.
Bishop Lamor Whitehead, a controversial Big Apple clergyman, told reporters outside the precinct that he was “startled” when “eight officers, guns are drawn, ran by me and made [Abdullah] get on the floor.
“This man is innocent,” Whitehead said of Abdullah. “His family has untold paperwork showing that he has mental health issues. As he states, he doesn’t remember anything.”
“I pray that the courts do the right thing with this young man,” the bishop said. “But as per him wanting to turn himself in, I don’t believe he’s a villain.”
Whitehead said he reached out to the mayor’s office trying to negotiate a peaceful surrender before police arrested Abdullah.
“Mayor Adams, we’ve been in contact all morning and he was ready to be here for the young man to be turned in,” he said outside the stationhouse.
“I wish the police department would have done it a little different and allowed what pastors do. This is what we do,” the bishop said. “And this really hurts me because I thought we had a relationship, right?”
“And I understand the seriousness of the crime — the alleged crime. But we have to have a segue. We have to have a segue between the community and the police department. And I want to thank the mayor for understanding and being a great support for this young man turning himself in.”
When asked what he said to the mayor, Whitehead would only say, “I had multiple conversations. I don’t really want to get into it, but he was very in support of this young man turning himself in because Mayor Adams is cleaning this city up. And to hear that the alleged person did the crime is willing to turn himself in. He was glad to hear this.”
Abdullah has been regarded as a “career criminal,” and has at least 19 arrests since 2015. He fled the Canal Street station after the shooting and had been the subject of a police manhunt.
After a stolen car bust in April, Abdullah was given his freedom papers, despite Brooklyn prosecutors asking that he be held on $15,000 bail.
“The most basic purpose of the criminal justice system is to keep people safe and in the only state in our nation where a judge is not allowed to consider dangerousness when sending bail,” Adams said at the briefing.
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