Koran Irvine was on his way across the George Washington Bridge at about 7 p.m. Tuesday when his blue Volkswagen Golf swerved into the next lane and almost hit a black Range Rover. Within minutes he had been shot. By Wednesday afternoon, a retired New York police detective was charged with his murder.
Port Authority police say surveillance video shows the near-miss. Irvine, 46, an off-duty Con Edison worker from Valley Cottage, had been driving onto the upper level from the Washington Heights ramp. The Range Rover’s driver, police say, sped up, pulled alongside the Volkswagen and fired one shot. It hit Irvine in the right shoulder and neck. His car struck the median and stopped partway across the span.
Officers who responded to a 911 call about a stopped car found him slumped in the driver’s seat, the rear passenger-side window broken by a bullet. He was taken to Englewood Hospital and Medical Center in New Jersey and died there. The shooter drove off. Police are treating it as road rage.
The man police charged
Victor Romero is 62 and lives in Haverstraw, New York. He left the NYPD 25 years ago, a narcotics detective, and now drives executives for a private company. Detectives traced the Range Rover through surveillance cameras to that company, and found it parked outside his house hours after the shooting. Police believe he was heading home after dropping a passenger in Manhattan.
On Wednesday he walked into the 33rd Precinct in upper Manhattan for questioning and was charged soon after. Police were still waiting on a warrant to search the house. The seized vehicle will be searched for evidence tying him to the shooting.
Romero has been in a gunfight before. The Associated Press reported that in June 2000 he was wounded in the hand and chest during an off-duty shootout with men trying to rob his family’s laundromat in Brooklyn. He used his service weapon to shoot one of them in the stomach, arm and leg, and the other man was hit in the legs. He retired the following year.
A neighbor, a husband, a father
Irvine had lived in Rockland County for about two years. “He’s really quiet guy,” neighbor David Kagan told WABC, adding that Irvine had recently put a lot of money into his house.
Hope Dorcelly, another neighbor, remembered how he treated people who had just moved in. “They have some chickens in the back,” she said. “He brought us chicken eggs, actually, to welcome us. And he was just a really nice guy.” She told reporters she was nervous heading to work the next morning.
Irvine marked 20 years with Con Edison in September. A spokesperson said the company was “heartbroken by the tragic loss of a member of the Con Edison family in this senseless act of violence.” A GoFundMe tribute described a man whose “family was his world.”
The westbound lanes of the upper deck stayed closed for about six hours and reopened around 1 a.m. Wednesday. Traffic backed up for hours.
Sources
- Retired NYPD detective charged in fatal shooting on George Washington Bridge
- Retired veteran NYPD detective arrested, charged with murder in fatal GWB shooting
- Retired detective arrested, charged with murder in road-rage killing on George Washington Bridge
Photo: Gryffindor (CC BY-SA 3.0)
