A manhunt was under way last night after a suspect in a Brooklyn bloodbath escaped from the 88th Precinct stationhouse by prying open a window gate and slithering through a small gap, police said.
“He may be armed and is very dangerous,” Assistant Chief Joe Cunneen said of the ex-con fugitive as bloodhounds sniffed the ground around the building to pick up his scent.
Alexis Vasquez, 23, was picked up late Thursday for questioning in a December shootout that left two men dead and a March shooting that left a man and a woman wounded.
He was being interrogated in a second-floor detective squad room at the 88th Precinct in Fort Greene.
Around 7 p.m. yesterday, Vasquez was left alone in the room for a few minutes, without handcuffs, cops said.
In that time, he managed to force open a space in the window gate, wriggle his skinny frame through it and drop 25 feet to the ground on DeKalb Avenue.
Police discovered almost immediately that he had fled – but Vasquez had vanished by then.
Cunneen said the frigid temperatures could be an asset to cops combing the neighborhood and Vasquez’s old haunts.
“Being cold, I don’t know how many places he can be hiding,” he said, adding that the NYPD is investigating why the prisoner wasn’t cuffed and why he was left alone.
Vasquez, who served time for grand larceny in 1997, has been on the lam since a brazen daylight shoot-’em-up last Dec. 5.
Police say he and his accomplices opened fire on a group of young men standing near the Ingersoll Houses, firing up to 25 rounds in what may have been a revenge slaying for a previous shooting.
Two men, Shaun Grant and Kenny Solomon, were killed. Three others were wounded. Two suspects were arrested at the scene, but one gunman got away.
Vasquez was also a suspect in a March 8 shooting in which two people were hurt, cops said.
Grant’s family was not aware cops had picked up a new suspect in the slaying – or that he had gotten away again.
“That’s the system, I guess,” said his aunt, Cynthia Wynn.
She said her 21-year-old nephew, who coached neighborhood kids in a basketball program, was an innocent bystander who was simply in the wrong place when he was shot in the head.
“He was a quiet person – always smiling. He never even had a fight on the street,” she said.
Ingersoll residents last night were worried about the escape.
“It’s frightening to think that a killer could be on the loose,” said John Rodriguez, 32.
“People are still talking about the shootings – they were horrible. To think the cops had him and he got away.”
Vasquez, who is about 5-foot-7 and 150 pounds, was wearing a beige T-shirt, red sweat pants and black sneakers when he escaped. He goes by the nickname “Chi-Chi” and sports tattoos on both arms.
Though he last lived on Stuyvesant Avenue, he has also resided at 707 Kingsboro Walk and 642 Willoughby St. in the recent past.