A fired computer repair shop employee who shot and killed his former boss in a broad daylight Upper West Side attack was arrested Friday morning — fleeing through a subway tunnel and then under a train. almost 24 hours after he went into hiding, law enforcement officials said.
Queens resident Eduardo Diaz, 42, faces attempted murder, assault and weapons charges in connection with the Thursday morning shooting that injured Boris Shapiro, 47, at West 69th Street and Columbus Avenue. Officials said he was arrested on a warrant and charged with possession.
Shapiro told the Post on Friday that he “heard” about Diaz's arrest by phone at Mount Sinai Morningside, where he is recuperating. “I feel great. I was worried he would come back.”
Diaz remained with his head down until detectives led him out of the 20th Precinct building, refusing to answer questions about why he allegedly shot his former boss.
He kept his head tilted away from the cameras as detectives ushered him into a waiting, unmarked car and buckled his seatbelt.
His arraignment was adjourned until Friday afternoon.
The victim told PIX 11 Thursday night that the two worked together at nearby Lincoln Business Machines, and Diaz had been fired several months before the shooting, officials said.
“I'm stable. I should be OK,” Shapiro told the outlet. “[The gunman] I was laid off six months or a year ago. ”
The victim told the outlet that Diaz showed up at his former workplace about a block away from the scene shortly before the shooting, but left without hurting anyone.
But Mr. Shapiro feared his former employee could do something worse, so he followed the threat down Columbus Street.
“I wanted to call the police,” he told the network. “He came in [the shop] I called 911 because I was worried he was going to come back and trap us because he had a gun. And then he saw me and ran after me. ”
Police said the enraged man shot Shapiro in the street around 9:20 a.m., once in the shoulder and once in the leg.
The gunman fled to the 72nd Street station and snuck in from there. under Officials said they encountered a train in the tunnel but managed to escape.
The escaped gunman wreaked havoc on some straphangers' commutes, forcing many to lie on the subway floor and flee through subway tunnels.
A woman who lives above a computer shop said she watched as tensions escalated between the gunman and his employer, who appeared to be working remotely.
“They started arguing inside the store, and then they got into an argument here, yeah, in front of the store. Then all the way to the corner,” she said.
“He was working remotely and doing some kind of service for a computer company,” the neighbor said. “Apparently there was some kind of issue around money. I can't remember exactly what he was shouting, but it was something about money and being cheated and treated unfairly… It was scary. It was.”
Virgilio Rojas, 56, who owns La Traviata Pizza next door, said he had seen the victim regularly “for years.”
“Sometimes when I need to make a copy or something, he hands it to me and comes here to pick up a slice,” Rojas said. “[He’s] He's a nice guy, he's part of the neighborhood. ”
Maya Shatsky, 25, who lives around the corner from the shooting scene, said she was getting ready for work when she heard the gunshots.
Ms. Schatzky said she and her roommate — who both grew up on the “family-oriented Upper West Side” — were troubled by unexpected violence.
“We are just shocked,” she said. “Things like that don't just happen outside our doorsteps, maybe in places like Times Square, but not at 9:30 a.m. on 69th and Columbus.”
“We still feel very safe overall,” Schatzky acknowledged. “We love the Upper West Side, but we don't really know how it happened and what happened outside of there. We were just shocked. ”
