NYPD body camera footage captured the horrifying moment two “heroic” officers were allegedly shot by a teenage immigrant, including one of the injured officers frantically telling his partner: “I’m shot, I’m shot.”
“I was at the hospital last night and I saw the body camera footage. [the footage] “It sent chills through my body,” NYPD Deputy Commissioner Kaz Daughtry said in an interview with WPIX-TV on Tuesday.
Authorities said officers Richard Iarrusso and Christopher Abreu, both 26, were shot and killed by suspect Bernardo Castro Mata, a Venezuelan immigrant, while fleeing a police stop in Queens early Monday morning.
“Mr. Yarusso is shot in the chest and his partner rushes in. His partner is shot in the leg,” Daughtry said, referring to the video.
“They finally [Mata] On the cuffs. And [Yarusso] “I’ve been shot, I’ve been shot,” he said. [Abreu] “They ask me, ‘Where were you shot?'”
Yarrusso, who was wearing a bulletproof vest, “said, ‘You’ve got a wound in your chest, but I’m OK. I’m OK,’ and applied a tourniquet to Officer Abreu,” Daughtry said.
“After being shot in the chest, he immediately distracted himself, instructed his teammates to apply a tourniquet to his partner and instructed other teammates to handcuff him. [Mata].
“That’s heroic,” Daughtry said.
The two officers were treated and released from hospital hours after the shooting, while Mata, who was shot in the ankle, remains hospitalized.
According to authorities, the suspect entered the country illegally from Texas in July 2023 and later sought asylum. However, his case was dismissed without adjudication on May 6, allegedly as part of the Biden administration’s “mass amnesty” program to clear immigration court backlogs.
The measure allowed illegal immigrants to remain in the U.S. legally and move about freely without supervision. At the time, he was known to have no criminal record.
Officers Iarrusso and Abreu spotted him driving a moped without license plates the wrong way and attempted to stop him.
Police later determined that Mata was a suspect in two robberies of women in Queens on May 21, about two weeks after his asylum application was withdrawn.
Based on his distinctive tattoos and social media posts, law enforcement suspects Mata may have become a member of the ruthless Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua while in the United States, law enforcement sources told The Washington Post on Tuesday.
Police say the suspect used an illegal Hi-Point .380-caliber handgun in the shooting.
“We must continue to work with our intelligence and federal partners to understand why these guns are so easily available,” NYPD Deputy Chief of Public Affairs Tarik Shepherd, who appeared on television with Daughtry, said.
“Why would someone who hasn’t lived in this country very long be one of the first things they look at is where they can get a gun in New York City?”
“This should never have happened,” Shepherd said.
