NYPD officials’ celebration of their city going twelve days without a murder had their celebration cut short on Friday, when Eric Roman, 28, was shot in the head, leg, and hand in Queens, dying on Saturday in Jamaica Hospital Medical Center.
The NYPD said that the 12-day span without a murder was the longest since the New York Police Department began recording statistics with a computerized program called Compstat in 1994.
Commissioner Bill Bratton, speaking Friday on CBS This Morning, said, “Shhhh! Don’t want to jinx it. We’re into our 12th day … and 11 is the record, and let’s keep it going.”
Roman and a friend left a gym and were walking home when two men accosted them. Roman’s friend was pistol-whipped, then fled, returning to find Roman wounded and the two men speeding off.
Crime typically drops in winter; the last time New York City went at least 10 days without a homicide, it was also in February.
In another case in Queens on Saturday, a 56-year-old man was found dead in his basement with head trauma. Police are unsure as to whether it was a homicide, although they had interrogated a man who held the victim’s credit cards and knew the victim because he did odd jobs for him.
The last homicide before Roman’s occurred on Feb. 1; one person was shot in Harlem, and one was shot in the Bronx.