Accused Q train killer Andrew Abdullah held without bail on murder, weapon charges
The man who allegedly shot dead a Goldman Sachs employee on the subway was remanded without bail on second-degree murder charges on Wednesday.
Andrew Abdullah, 25, was arraigned for the fatal shooting of Daniel Enriquez on the Q train as the victim was on his way to Sunday brunch.
Abdullah was arrested Tuesday outside Manhattan Legal Aid Society offices after two days on the run.
A career criminal and reputed gang banger, Abdullah sought to surrender to Mayor Eric Adams with the help of a controversial Brooklyn bishop with ties to the first-term mayor.
Instead, the fugitive task force stormed the law offices and took the accused killer into custody.
He is charged with second-degree murder and second-degree criminal possession of a weapon, police and prosecutors said.
“At approximately 11:42 a.m. while the Q train was between DeKalb [Ave] and Canal Street, the defendant was pacing back-and-forth near the center of the train car just a few feet away from where Daniel Enriquez was sitting and looking at his cell phone,” Assistant District Attorney Nicole Blumberg said in Manhattan Criminal Court.
“In an unprovoked attack and with the intent to kill, the defendant pulled out his loaded handgun, aimed it at Daniel Enriquez and fired one shot at the center of Daniel Enriquez’s body.”
Abdullah fled the train at Chinatown’s Canal Street station, but cops were able to track his movements and “identified him as the shooter,” Blumberg said, adding police eventually recovered the murder weapon and matched it with the shell casing they found in the train car.
Judge Jonathan Svetkey remanded Abdullah, who stood in court handcuffed behind his back wearing black sneakers, grey sweatpants and a short-sleeved t-shirt over a long-sleeved t-shirt, to jail.
The defendant said nothing during his appearance and turned around at one point to acknowledge his supporters in the courtroom.
Legal Aid Society lawyer Kristin Bruan requested that her client be given medical and psychiatric care, which Svetkey agreed to.
Abdullah already had three pending cases and was sought for questioning in an armed robbery earlier this year when cops say he allegedly opened fire and killed Enriquez.
The Goldman Sachs employee was hit in the chest and left dying on the floor of the train while the gunman fled, handing the weapon off to a homeless vagrant, cops said.
Enriquez was pronounced dead at Bellevue Hospital.
Abdullah was initially identified as a person of interest in the slaying, but was identified as a suspect shortly before his arrest on Tuesday, police sources said.
Earlier in the day, the NYPD announced that the Luger 9 mm handgun the killer handed to a homeless man — who later sold it to another vagrant for drugs — was confirmed to be the weapon that shot and killed Enriquez on the train.
Lamor Whitehead, the controversial Brooklyn bishop who tried unsuccessfully to negotiate Abdullah’s surrender, told reporters he had “multiple conversations” with Adams, and had been “in contact all morning” with the mayor before the arrest.
At a briefing later, Adams sidestepped his ties to Whitehead, saying only that he has “a good relationship with many of the religiously throughout the city.”
He declined to discuss what the two men discussed, nothing the case is still part of an ongoing investigation by borough prosecutors and cops.
Adam Pollack, Enriquez’s live-in partner of 18 years, said the slay victim had only recently begun riding the subways to work, abandoning his practice of taking an Uber into the city from Brooklyn because of the ride-share company’s recent boost in cost.
Pollack, 54, said Enriquez typically traveled to his Goldman Sachs office four times a week and went to Manhattan on Sundays to shoot pool and have brunch with friends.
“He stopped taking Uber f—ng maybe a couple of weeks ago,” he told The Post Monday. “He wasn’t a subway person. It was the surge pricing, the $40 each way.”
