 Good afternoon everyone. Thank you for being here. We're joined today by New York City Mayor Eric Adams Chief of detectives James Esseg and his team chief of transit Jason Wilcox first deputy commissioner Eddie Caban CEO of the MTA Janell Lieber And thank you once again for taking the time out to be here Today the manhunt for Andrew Abdullah is over Less than three hours after the NYPD released his photograph to the public. Mr. Abdullah knew he had nowhere left to run Your NYPD investigators identified him as the killer of Daniel Enriquez Through canvassing by our transit officers community engagement social media outreach and excellent detective work He was arrested in his lawyer's office this afternoon and is now being prepared for arraignment The murder of Daniel Enriquez was every New Yorkers worst nightmare Tragically, it's a scenario that we've seen play out far too many times before Andrew Abdullah was well known to the criminal justice system But again and again his repeat offenses were not enough to keep him off our streets His criminal history stretches back to 2016 and includes charges of felony assault Robbery attempted murder and a still open gun charge from two years ago The most basic purpose of the criminal justice system is to keep people safe and In the only state in our nation where a judge is not allowed to consider dangerousness when setting bail This was another yet another failure of that system and now Daniel Enriquez is gone His family and loved ones are suffering and they rightfully want to know why Well, there is no valid reason why Because this horrific crime should never have happened And I said two weeks ago after the shooting of our officer Dennis Vargas that we need to right these wrongs The violence on the Q train last Sunday morning was committed by another repeat offender Who was given every leeway by the criminal justice system? We cannot and will not stand for it Today a killer is all for our streets and we turn our attention to getting justice for Daniel Enriquez and his family That's our focus moving forward in this case and along with the district attorney's office and our other law enforcement Partners, that's exactly what we are going to do. I want to turn it over to the mayor Eric Adams Thank You commissioner Thanks for the good work of the men and women and our partners in law enforcement We got him and we got him in a way that he did not cause more injuries To New Yorkers, I think the commissioner stated something that's important. We got a killer off our streets But far too many killers are back on our streets through a revolving door Criminal justice system that appears to pit NYPD and good New Yorkers against the bad guys We were fortunate to have a thorough police work here and the chief of detectives is going to lay out the history of this person Any reasonable thinking New Yorker is going to ask themselves Why is this person? still on our streets And that in itself is a tragedy But the fact is he is the poster child of many people Who believe they can create violence without any repercussion at all? It is too easy to get a gun too comfortable to use the gun and There is a pervasive feeling among dangerous people that there's no repercussions for their actions for using the gun As we stand here today, we also want to have our hearts go out to the family When you think about An innocent person he should have been sitting at his desk at Goldman Sachs He should have been planning Outings with his family He should have been able to enjoy all the things that New Yorkers enjoy Instead we are mourning his death. I spoke to his sister yesterday She was full of pain Just cannot find reasons why Someone would take the life of her brother hearing her words Coming from the Bronx The commissioner and I stopped to see the parents of 11 year old baby. That was prematurely Taken from us due to gun violence. We see it far too often and all of this is fueled by America's toxic gun cultures His loved ones have to experience the loss New Yorkers have to experience the trauma trauma as We try to rebound and rebuild our system this is an impact But we will respond accordingly and ensure our city is safe and our transportation system is safe Part of our recovery is tied to the MTA That's why we glad to have the MTA as a partner as we move forward to rid it of the violence that we're seeing Daniel was shot in his heart We feel it in our hearts. We lost the fellow New Yorker one of the good guys We're doing our job. I say over and over again NYPD with their partners have removed over 2,900 illegal guns off our streets As soon as we place them on more return With bad guys who feel comfortable enough even after we arrest them that they can come back out and Reek havoc on our city the industry pumps guns into the community faster than we can take them out Arresting the shooter doesn't change what is going on every day in this industry And we have to fight united to stop the flow of gun To see a violence comes from many rivers. We must damn each one today. We damned one of them There are far too many more we have to damn without the help to carry it out also want to Put my heart out to the family members in Texas elementary school a mass shooting two babies Do a possibly 12 injured These shooters are happening far too often And the response is not meeting the level of threat and danger that we are experiencing Not acceptable We will never surrender our streets to violence I want to thank the men and women of the NYPD for apprehending this dangerous person off our streets Thank you, mr. Mayor Just going to walk you through the investigation But before I start with me is Hank Sortner. He's the Manhattan South investigative chief who chaired this investigation So on sunday may 22nd at approximately 11 42 a.m In the last car of a Manhattan bound Q train while it was approaching the canal street station Eyewitnesses stated that a male was pacing back and forth inside the train car muttering to himself The only distinguishable words heard were no phones The male suddenly and without any prior interactions or provocation Walked up to our victim a 48 year old male named Daniel Enriquez And shot him one time in the chest He was later pronounced at Bellevue hospital A nine millimeter shell casing was recovered on the scene As soon as the train stopped the perpetrator Exited the train onto the platform and fled on foot up the staircase As he reached the top of the staircase at Lafayette and canal street He handed off the firearm to a homeless male identified as Jabbar balding Mr. Balding was apprehended and interviewed He stated that he does not know who the perpetrator is and just randomly handed him the gun Further investigation and in-depth interviews later led to the recovery of that gun It is a nine millimeter ruga firearm reported stolen in Hampton, Virginia November 18th of 2019 It is a ballistics match to the shell casing on the train Investigators were able through video taken on the train by passengers And video at the turnstile gate to get a description of our shooter Which was a male black with gray sweatpants and a black hoodie Approximately 11 minutes later Transit officers responding to the scene stopped the suspect He had altered his appearance Later detectives recovered video of that male removing his hoodie and carry in a backpack That male was identified as Andrew Abdullah A nine block gang member He's a male black 25 years old with a date of birth of December 2nd 1996 His last known address is 580 Flatbush Avenue He has eight prior arrests Including an assault in August of 2016 An assault in April of 2017 In May of 2017 He was a defendant in a polo ground gang takedown by the gun violence suppression division He was charged with attempted murder Robbery and conspiracy in the first degree For that he received a 30 month sentence with two years post-release supervision He was out on June 11th of 2019 and was on parole until June 11th of 2021 He was again arrested on January 25th of 2020 This time with a loaded firearm or 40 caliber He was remanded later made bail and his next court date is June 6th of 2022 for trial hearings On March 24th of 2021. He was arrested for assault three domestic violence On June of 21. He was arrested for criminal contempt And just last month April of 2022 for grand loss in the auto where he stole the Lexus He has a court date at June 14th for that He is also wanted for a strong armed robbery on the streets of Manhattan, which occurred in February of 2022 He was apprehended a short time ago by a regional task force in front of 49 Thomas street He's been charged with murder in the second degree And criminal possession of a weapon in the second degree With that, I'd like to turn it over to the MTA chair before we take questions When I first saw the images from the MTA cameras on sunday I was worried about How the police were going to catch this guy He was wearing a hoodie and a mask I said then I said to myself. It's the nypd. They'll get him And here we are Thank you, mr. Mayor Thank you commissioner Sewell Thank you to everybody at the nypd The nypd is as good an investigative force as any in the world New yorkers know the nypd is going to get the bad guys On behalf of governor huckle And on behalf of mta riders And mta workers and all new yorkers. Thank you. Thank you But we also need to focus on what the mayor is saying on how we need to make sure that we don't just catch bad guys After the fact that we get them before the crime occurs that we interdict That's why I am so appreciative of mayor adam's omnipresent strategy For promoting transit safety he and the police commissioner are committed to doing what's necessary To stop bad guys before they get into our system at the fairgates But also by having transit officers on platforms and on trains I recognize that doesn't mean that every train every day and every platform any every minute of every day will have a cop But this is important work It is an important change of paradigm and it began under chief wilcox's leadership Before this terrible event and I know it will continue over time I believe that we will help With the mayor and the police commissioner's strategy to restore riders sense of safety which has been so harmed So uneroded by this terrible incident and to restore confidence in the safety of the mass transit system Thank you Well, we always encourage particularly the religious leaders. I have a good relationship with many of the religious leaders throughout the city And when it was placed on my radar That this person wanted to turn themselves in I communicated with law enforcement Because it's about getting the bad guy off the street. That's what we did And all that participated in assisting us to do so. We say thank you This is the good guys one today by getting him off the streets No This is going to be decided in court Not with any civilian And so the court is going to determine Any parts of this case to determine how this should be handled and we're not going to do or say anything That's going to interfere with the prosecution of this dangerous person No, we're not Now, um, we don't know why he says it We believe that it was maybe he wants nobody to take phone cameras of the incident that was about to go down Well, I think we've been very clear that we would like judges to be able to consider dangerousness And clearly with the history that the chief laid out There are times in this case where a judge could have considered possibly that he may have been a dangerous society And he should not have been on the street I want to touch on that also The attempted murder He had 30 months he shot someone So he failed the first time He murdered someone this time That's a breakdown We should not be plea bargaining in these cases particularly in gun violence We're laser focused on gun violence and we should not be plea bargaining these cases on gun violence Here's the person that shot someone robbery when you look at the top charges He was able to plea down To I believe an attempted gun possession That's just a breakdown in how we're not taking this stuff serious I'm sorry There's no fish bigger than the person that pulls the trigger No, he's uh represented by counsel no statements Uh That's something I think that you have to ask the bishop I don't know the connection All I wanted was this bad guy off the street And whoever wanted to participate in assisting us doing so in any way That's good enough for me. He could answer that question. I can't This is a an active case in front of the da and I'm not going to say anything that's going to impede the investigation at all Uh, if the district attorney wants me to come in and sit down and have a thorough conversation I'm willing to do so But we're not going to do anything to allow this person to Anyway impede the trial and conviction of him Well, I'll turn it over to the chief But I would say that we had a significant amount of assistance from the public in some of these cases We also had extraordinary detective work. We put the information out. We put pictures out We put his image on social media. So we pretty much in many cases. We shrunk his world So in these instances people realize they really don't have too many places to go So we really want to make sure we get the information out there and get people to help us with these investigations and these apprehensions You know, that's Big mystery in this one. Like I says, he was just pacing back and forth And there was a lot of other people on that train. He just targeted this This poor individual and for reasons we don't know Yeah, the officers were responding to the shooting. There was a description put over as I put out the sweatpants gray sweatpants at a black hoodie They observed him walking away from the subway. It's a short Block and a half away They stopped them talked to him there. So what he was doing. They were satisfied with the answers He had a different colored shirt on and he had a backpack They radioed to the the officers on the scene and it was a different description But he did show us his ID. He leaves when we later Review the video from the train and we see that distinctive orange shirt. Now we go back there We retrieve more video catching him taking off the hoodie and we're able to put that together We have his ID and that's how we identify him Yes Well, I mean we receive regional task force Was looking from last night. We had numerous locations throughout brooklyn We received word this morning that he was going to return turn himself in He was given ample time to turn himself in and regional found him in front of 49 thomas today and brought him in All right everyone. Thank you so much