The Queens gunman who shot and wounded an NYPD cop along with an innocent bystander before he was shot dead was a career criminal with more than 17 felony arrests stretching back to the 1980s, police said.
Gary “Green Eyes” Worthy was already on lifetime parole when he robbed two stores on Hillside Ave. and Guy Brewer Blvd. Tuesday evening, each time firing a bullet into the air from his revolver to scare the workers into compliance, NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said.
The robberies set in motion a fatal clash between Worthy and Officer Rich Wong, who was shot in the leg during the wild shootout near Jamaica Ave. and 164th St. in Jamaica around 6:30 p.m.
Worthy served more than 14 years in prison after being convicted of drugs and weapons possession and burglary in 2009. He was released in 2021 and put on lifetime parole.
Since his release, he’s been arrested seven times, mostly for drug possession, burglary, and assault, police said.
“His last arrest was six days ago for narcotics possession and resisting arrest,” Kenny said at a press conference at Jamaica Hospital, where Officer Wong was treated and is on the mend. “(He) was released on his own recognizance on that charge.”
Worthy’s last known address was in South Jamaica. At the time of his death, he had three pending cases in Queens and was suspected of committing a robbery and a burglary, police said.
His first arrest was in 1984 when he was busted for marijuana possession but he moved on to burglary, robbery, and drug possession by the end of the 80s.
In 1994, he was arrested on a murder charge. He ultimately pleaded guilty to manslaughter for that killing, Mayor Adams said.
“(He’s) a brazen dangerous career criminal who didn’t think twice about killing a police officer,” Police Benevolent Association President Patrick Hendry said about Worthy at Tuesday’s press conference.
Worthy should have been thrown back behind bars upon his first arrest after his release from prison, Hendry said. Instead, he was repeatedly allowed back on the streets, where he wantonly fired off his weapon during two robberies and then tried to end a cop’s life, the union head said.
“We will continue to take dangerous criminals off the streets. We have your back,” Hendry said. “I know what doesn’t have your back — the criminal justice system. It continues to let us down every single day.”
Wong and his partner were searching for the person responsible for the back-to-back holdups when a witness pointed out Worthy.
The officers asked Worthy to stop but he refused. He ran off, pulled a gun and fired at the officers, striking Wong in the leg.
A 26-year-old woman shopping on Jamaica Ave. was also blasted in the leg, cops said. The woman was behind Wong and his partner when she was hit. Forensic investigators are trying to determine if the woman was hit by a ricochet or the bullet that hit Wong, which went through the seven-year NYPD veteran’s leg. Worthy fired one shot in the cops’ direction, Kenny said.
A wounded Wong fired back, fatally shooting Worthy in the face, cops said.
“He was coming out of the Target. The cop told him about four times, ‘Do not run. Do not run’. After that a shot rang out,” Henry Jaikeren, a street vendor working across the street at the time, told the Daily News Tuesday. “The guy spun around and the cop shot him four more times in the belly. He was dead on the ground.”
Mayor Adams said Tuesday’s shooting was the second time in two days in which citizens “witnessed a criminal justice system that failed New Yorkers.”
On Monday, homeless man Ramon Rivera, who had been repeatedly arrested for low-level offenses and had never been sentenced to more than a year in jail, was arrested for butchering three innocent people during a crazed stabbing spree across Manhattan.
