A Manhattan grand jury has indicted two men from the Dominican Republic in connection with the shooting of an off-duty Customs and Border Protection officer in Harlem last month, authorities said.
Miguel Francisco Mora Nunez, 21, was charged with attempted murder, assault, robbery and weapons possession. Christhian Aybar-Berroa, 22, was charged with assault, robbery and weapons possession. Federal authorities previously charged both men with illegally possessing ammunition.
Prosecutors said the shooting happened just before midnight on July 19, when Mora and Aybar-Berroa allegedly robbed a woman of her phone in Fort Washington Park before riding a moped north toward the George Washington Bridge. They then allegedly spotted the officer sitting by the Hudson River with another person, officials said.
According to Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, Mora got off the moped, drew a gun and approached. The officer drew his own firearm.
“Mora fired, and the officer returned fire,” Bragg said at a news conference Wednesday.
Authorities said the officer was shot in the face and hand and spent several days in the hospital. Mora was struck in the groin, officials said.
Aybar-Berroa allegedly drove Mora away on the moped and later dropped him off at a Bronx hospital, where he was arrested, according to prosecutors. Aybar-Berroa was arrested the next day, officials said.
Both defendants remained in federal custody and are expected to be arraigned later this month. Their attorneys were not immediately available for comment.
Mayor Eric Adams, who joined Bragg and federal officials for the announcement, pointed to mopeds as tools for quick getaways in street crimes.
“That’s why we removed 100,000 off our streets,” Adams said.
Bragg declined to discuss the defendants’ prior criminal histories.
Federal officials have accused Mora and Aybar-Berroa of involvement in a string of robberies and criticized the city’s sanctuary policies, which bar local jails from holding people for federal immigration authorities without a warrant.
“They shouldn’t have been here,” said Homeland Security Investigations Special Agent Ricky Patel. “If they were deported and not allowed to be in this country, this tragedy wouldn’t have happened.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
