Cops are hunting for a wheelchair-bound killer who whipped out a gun and shot a man dead in an apparent drug-related beef in The Bronx – and say they’ll charge the able-bodied thug who was pushing him at the time as an accomplice, too.
The gunman fatally blasted victim Kevin Thomas several times in the torso outside the Mott Haven Houses early Sunday morning.
Before the shooting, Thomas, who was found with crack cocaine hidden inside his buttocks, tried to run. He had just been attacked by a group of men on East 143rd Street around 2 a.m., police sources said.
The gunman opened fire, shooting Thomas, as another man pushed his wheelchair from behind.
“Right now, we’re close to identifying at least two of those persons who were present, and that’s all I’m going to say,” NYPD Chief of Detectives Robert Boyce told reporters Monday.
Boyce added that the man who pushed the gunman’s wheelchair “will be charged” when caught.
Boyce suspected that the shooting “looks like retaliation.”
“But we’ll go forward and see what happened, who put him in that wheelchair,” Boyce said.
Asked about the unusualness of the handicapped shooter, Boyce quipped, “I’ve had that before, believe it or not.”
Thomas has been shot twice during two separate previous incidents before his third and final time, according to Boyce.