Friday, August 14, 2015

The East Coast head of the Bloods gang — who wounded a firefighter after torching his Staten Island house Friday morning during a confrontation with US marshals — is dead after a gunfight with cops,

FDNY SHOOTING UPDATE: GANG LEADER DEAD, FIRE OFFICER WOUNDED

    
Friday, August 14, 2015  

The East Coast head of the Bloods gang — who wounded a firefighter after torching his Staten Island house Friday morning during a confrontation with US marshals — is dead after a gunfight with cops, law enforcement sources said.
The gunman, 38-year-old Garland Tyree, had come out of his home shooting again at officers around 11:45 a.m., and authorities responded with gunfire and tear gas.

Tyree, who went by the nickname “Murder,” was fatally shot by an Emergency Services Unit cop in the exchange, the sources added.
His distraught family was at the scene.

The shootout came several hours after Tyree declared “Today I die” on Facebook before torching his Staten Island house when marshals came to serve a federal warrant on him. An FDNY lieutenant was shot in the leg and buttocks as he responded to the blaze.

Authorities surrounded the house at 15 Destiny Court, and Garland continued shooting with an assault rifle, sources said.

He was alone inside his basement apartment and communicating with cops trying to get him to surrender, law enforcement sources said.
His mother was on her way 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 and taken to Richmond University Medical Center. He was in stable condition and was 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 media outside the hospital.

Tyree identified himself on his Facebook page as a Staten Island resident who 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 at 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 had 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.”