Neighbor Arrested, Charged With Pushing Retired Officer Who Fatally Shot Man In The Borough Hall Subway Station: NYPD

A  neighbor has been arrested and charged with repeatedly pushing and shoving a retired corrections officer who then fatally shot the neighbor’s 32-year-old friend inside the Borough Hall subway station Tuesday night, according to the NYPD and the criminal complaint.

Joscelyn Evering, a 28-year-old man who lives on Newkirk Avenue, between E. 8th Street and Coney Island Avenue, was arrested and charged with assault, menacing and harassment, police said late last night.

Evering posted $1,500 bail following his arraignment at Brooklyn Criminal Court today, am New York reported.

According to the NYPD and other published reports, Evering and his now deceased friend, Gilbert Drogheo, 32, allegedly started a fight with the retired officer, 69-year-old Willie Groomes, inside a Brooklyn-bound 4 train around 6:30pm Tuesday.

The criminal complaint stated that Evering “did repeatedly push and shove Willie Groomes about the body causing Willie Groomes to fall onto the train seats.”

The three then exited the train to the Borough Hall station, and it was there that the altercation spiraled out of control and Groomes “fired one round from a firearm,” striking Drogheo in the torso, police said.

EMS responded to the station and rushed Drogheo to Brooklyn Hospital, where he was pronounced dead, the NYPD said.

Groomes has not yet been charged in the incident, and the New York Times reported that “police and prosecutors were still grappling with whether the killing — the first in the transit system this year — constituted a crime, or if Mr. Groomes had been justified in his use of deadly force to counter what he told detectives was an assault.”