Gang member in standoff after shooting firefighter, setting house ablaze
A firefighter was shot by a Bloods gang member who declared “Today I die” on Facebook before torching a Staten Island house Friday morning when US marshals showed up to serve him with a federal warrant, sources said.
Authorities surrounded the house at 15 Destiny Court after the gunman – identified as 38-year old Tyree Garland – continued shooting with an assault rifle, sources said.
He is alone inside his basement apartment and was communicating with cops trying to get him to surrender, law enforcement sources said.
His mother was en route to the scene to help get him to give up, sources said.
Tyree, who has 18 prior arrests, was being served shortly before 6 a.m. with a federal parole violation issued by the Eastern District, a police source said.
Fire Lt. James Hayes, 54, was shot in the leg and buttocks as he responded to the blaze.
He was taken to Richmond University Medical Center. He is in stable condition and expected to survive.
“I just spoke to my daughter and he’s in stable condition. He’s doing fine,” a woman believed to be Hayes’ mother-in-law said at his Staten Island home.
More than a dozen firefighters and cops gathered outside the emergency room at the hospital.
“He’s going to be all right. He got shot in the buttocks,” a firefighter told The Post outside the hospital.
He identified himself on the page as a Staten Island resident who is the CEO and founder of Real Write Publishing.
He wrote “The Trey Way,” a children’s book that warns about the dangers of a life of crime.
Tyree fired several shots and wounded the firefighter as multiple law-enforcement agencies surrounded the home, authorities say.
He was still barricaded inside the house as of 11 a.m. and surrounded by several NYPD units, including Emergency Services and K-9.
A neighbor described Tyree as “in and out of it.”
“Sometimes he’s talking real nice and then sometimes he just snaps. He’s on medication. Maybe he don’t take his meds. It’s schizophrenia. The neighborhood knows. Everybody knows,” said Haywood, who declined to give his last name.
“He sells books, yeah. He just tries to make a sale and tell people things. I never was too close to him. Definitely you could tell something is off. He had on-again off-again girlfriend. Always on and off,” he said.
A nearby deli worker said Tyree has followed a woman into the store a few times.
“She comes in here and hides in the back and asks, ‘Is he gone?’ It’s happened about three or four times,” said the worker, who declined to give his name.
“You can tell something’s not right. He comes in and out quickly and doesn’t make conversation.”
Facebook friends flooded Tyree’s page with messages of concern after another post that read: “They kicked in my door and it popped off.”
“U will never die bro,” “Hope everything is ok,” “What u mean? Whats up?” were among the responses to the messages.
On Aug. 11, he wrote, “I was a man/child,” and posted an old newspaper clipping with the headline, “Cops want to quiz teen in connection with party slaying.”
One of those who commented on the article wrote, “I remember we both took our cases to trial and beat it.”
Last month, he posted a photo of Mutulu Shakur, the former Black Liberation Army member who was sentenced to 60 years in prison for his role in the 1981 Brinks armored truck robbery.
“This is one of the men who I tip my hat to and have learned so much from,” Garland wrote.
Tyree’s criminal career dates back to at least 1990.
In 1995, he pleaded guilty to criminal possession of a weapon of connection with his fatal shooting of a man named James Laurent, records show. He also shot at another man during the incident.
While awaiting trial in that case, he repeatedly slashed a fellow inmate in prison, sources said. In 1997, he attacked another inmate who required 60 stitches.
Soon after his release in 2004, cops executed a search warrant at a Staten Island home where he and several others were present. They recovered guns and ammo at the scene.
He was sentenced in Brooklyn federal court in 2006 to 10 years in prison and was released in 2012, records show.
He was later hit with probation violation for associating with gang members.
In arguing against revocation, lawyers said he did well after prison – working on the voter registration campaign of Shirley Huntley, the disgraced former state senator from Queens who was sentenced in 2013 for looting a taxpayer-funded charity.
A forensic pathologist even noted in papers that “Mr. Tyree is capable of making an excellent transition to a productive, law-abiding and successful life and career.”
But Judge Raymond Dearie ruled that he violated probation for using drugs and associated with gangsters, and sentenced him to a year in prison in August 2013.
He also has faced raps over the years for assault, menacing, witness tampering, grand larceny and resisting arrest, among others.
He wrote on his website that he founded his company in 2006 after he discussed with a friend and mentor “the silliness contained in a lot of popular Urban Fiction and the vacuum that it left for the more gritty and talented writers to step in.”
Larry Celona, Selim Algar and Jamie Schram contributed reporting.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment