Police On Hunt For Gunman In Bronx Murder, Multiple Shootings
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- Police on Monday said an alleged gang member with 23 arrests is wanted in a shooting caught on camera – and is the city's top public enemy right now.
As CBS2's Alice Gainer reported, police want to find Ruben Pizzaro before anyone else is shot.
Surveillance video from May 2013 shows a suspect run up to another man who has a gun, grab the firearm, and start firing at random.
Another surveillance video from Nov. 24 shows a man being chased in a Bronx parking lot. The gunman fires at the man, and the victim falls down and gets up – but ends up dying after being repeatedly shot again.
Police said Pizzaro, 23 – a member of the Bloods street gang – was behind both incidents. The man killed in November is identified as David Rivera, 24.
Police said the two were quarreling before the shooting.
"We believe it could be actually something over jealousy regarding Ruben's girlfriend -- something as simple as that," said NYPD Lt. Richard Gibson.
Police said Rivera is a member of the rival Crips, and that the two had known each other since childhood. Police also said the November incident was the fourth time Pizzaro tried to kill Rivera, but they said Rivera always refused to testify.
Rivera, a father of two, had just dropped his kids off at daycare when he was killed right outside the daycare center, according to his cousin, Carlos Bonet.
"I just received a text that day that it happened, and I was in shock," Bonet said.
Coincidentally, CBS2 bumped into Bonet on the same street as Pizzaro's latest shooting crime, back on New Year's Eve in Inwood, Upper Manhattan.
Police said Pizzaro, who had a gun-carjacked a van in front of 54 Sherman Ave., told the driver to take him to nearby Ellwood Street, and then took the driver's ID, jacket and debit card and told him to wait for him.
Afterward, police said Pizzaro approached the 29-year-old man, demanded his backpack, and then shot him in the shoulder.
"I just hope they catch this guy soon, before he makes some more havoc on the street," Bonet said.
So do police.
"He's a menace, because he's a shooter with no regard for anybody's safety. Yours or mine or anybody's," Gibson said.
The NYPD Crime Stoppers is offering a reward of up to $2,500 for information on Pizzaro's whereabouts.
