NEW YORK (AP) — A long-retired NYPD detective was arrested Wednesday in the road rage killing of a motorist on the George Washington Bridge this week, police said.
Victor Romero, 62, was charged with murder in the death of Koran Irvine, 46, who was found just after 7 p.m. Tuesday wounded and unconscious in the driver’s seat of a vehicle on the New Jersey-bound side of the bridge’s upper level.
Sources told 1010 WINS that Romero didn't turn himself in but was tracked down by NYPD detectives. His car is in police custody and his home in Haverstraw is frozen pending a search warrant.
According to sources, surveillance footage shows Irvine's Volkswagen nearly colliding with a Range Rover near the 179th Street ramp to the bridge. Moments later, both vehicles were headed westbound towards New Jersey when a single shot was fired from the other car into the Volkswagen, striking Irvine in the shoulder.
Irvine, of Valley Cottage, was pronounced dead at a hospital. The shooting near the end of the evening rush snarled traffic for hours on the busy Hudson River span that connects Manhattan and Fort Lee.
Romero retired from the NYPD in 2001 after he was wounded in the hand and chest in an off-duty shootout with men attempting to rob his family’s Brooklyn laundromat in June 2000. Using his service weapon, Romero shot one of the men in the stomach, arm and leg, and another man in the legs, according to news accounts from the time.
A telephone number listed for Romero in public records rang unanswered. Information on a lawyer who could comment on his behalf was not immediately available. Romero, a drug detective in Brooklyn, had been working for the NYPD for six years when the laundromat shooting occurred, according to a New York Post article from the time.
Irvine worked for Con Edison, the utility said in a statement, calling the shooting a “senseless act of violence."
“Our deepest condolences go out to his family, friends, colleagues, and everyone who knew and loved him,” the company said.
1010 WINS contributed to this report.
