MTA police fatally shoot parolee armed with machine pistol in Queens: VIDEO

MTA police officers shot and killed a parolee armed with a loaded machine pistol during a wild scene on a crowded Queens street as they tried to arrest him for groping a 19-year-old woman, authorities said.

Nearly a dozen people, including two small children, were walking by the officers as they wrestled Bashe McDaniel to the ground near 91st Ave. and Sutphin Blvd. in Jamaica, surveillance video recovered by the Daily News shows.

A second later, McDaniel fired a round from his Mac-10, sending everyone scattering.

“People were running and trying to get away,” a worker at a nearby smoke shop told the Daily News Saturday. “There was a lot of shots fired.You don’t see a shooting like that over here much.”

One officer drew his pistol and fired as his partner jumped off Bashe, who apparently continued to reach for his weapon, even when wounded, the video shows.

At least four shots were fired by MTA police during the exchange, the video shows.

McDaniel, 52, had done five stints in prison, mostly for weapons possession and was convicted of manslaughter in 1990, according to court records.

His death stunned McDaniel’s parents, who said the ex-con was trying to turn his life around.

“I’ve got questions. Questions, but no answers,” Chester McCown, McDaniel’s heartbroken father told the Daily News.

“He said he was getting his life back together. So I took his word for it. Then this morning I got this bad news,” McCown, 76, said.

The woman entered MTA’s Long Island Rail Road headquarters next door to Jamaica Station at about 10 p.m. Friday and claimed McDaniel had groped her, MTA Chief of Police John Mueller said at a press conference.

She said the stranger, who was wearing a baseball cap with the word “Killa” on it, had blocked her path and grabbed her breasts, officials said. She had managed to snap a photo of him before reporting the incident to police.

MTA cops went looking for the groper and quickly found McDaniel steps from Jamaica Station and Long Island Rail Road headquarters.

McDaniel was wearing a distinctive jacket with a letter “B” on it that had been described by the victim, Mueller said. He was also a match for the man in the photo the victim shared with police.

“We showed him a picture of himself that the victim of the forcible touching took,” Mueller said.

The two MTA officers — whose body-worn cameras were turned on — tried to arrest McDaniel, but he put up a struggle, Mueller said.

“He refused to put his hands behind his back,” the police chief said.

The officers Tased him and wrestled him to the ground, but McDaniel managed to get off a shot with the Mac-10, which police said was equipped with a 30-round magazine.

The officers returned fire, fatally striking McDaniel, said police. The machine pistol was found under his body as EMS rushed him to Jamaica Hospital, where he died a short time later, Mueller said.

“To our knowledge there is no other danger to the community,” Mueller said, adding that the two officers involved in the shooting were taken to an area hospital for trauma, but “they are not injured or hurt.”

One of the officers involved in the shooting has been an MTA police officer for three years, an MTA police source said. The other has been with the MTA police for a year. Both were assigned to District 3 at the Jamaica station and neither officer had fired their guns before during their time with the MTA.

Many MTA cops join the department after working for other police forces, so it wasn’t immediately clear how much law enforcement experience the two officers had before their showdown with McDaniel, the source said.

MTA police could not immediately confirm how many shots were fired during the exchange.

Pictures from a Daily News photographer showed what appeared to be a semiautomatic weapon on the ground at the scene, along a block of retail businesses.

The “Killa” hat was also on the sidewalk by the weapon, and numerous evidence cones were spread across the scene, suggesting multiple shots were fired.

McCown said McDaniel’s mother had to go to Queens to identify their son’s body.

“I was shocked. Devastated,” he said. “[I] couldn’t even eat no breakfast this morning. I didn’t really feel like eating.”

McDaniel has an extensive criminal record that includes five misdemeanor and seven felony arrests.

He had been repeatedly in and out of prison since 1990, when he was convicted of manslaughter for killing someone in Greenwich Village on Aug. 10, 1988.

He was released from prison in 1997, only to be back behind bars in 2000 on a weapons possession conviction, prison records show.

Over the years, McDaniel did brief stints in prison for weapons possession and attempted burglary. His last prison stint was in 2017 after he was convicted of weapons possession and assault. The arrest, once again, happened in Greenwich Village.

He was released from the Riverview Correctional Facility in Ogdensburg, N.Y., on Sept. 22, 2022 and was on parole until 2026, records show.

McDaniel grew up in lower Manhattan and stayed with his mother when he wasn’t in prison, relatives said. Recently, he began living with his girlfriend in Queens.

McCown last saw his son a few weeks ago, he said. During their conversation, he said he had gotten a construction job and was keeping out of trouble.

“I ain’t seen him groping no girls that’s for sure. I don’t know whether he had a gun or not, they’re still investigating,” McCown said. “He’s real loved, I know that.”

Marana Doris, a worker at the Jamaica Green Grocery near the shooting scene said that section of Jamaica has become “very dangerous” in the last few years.

“Maybe two years ago, after the pandemic, it started to get crazy,” Doris, 44, said. “There’s people selling drugs on the corners and it gets dangerous at night.

“Stuff like this, it makes you scared to be around here,” she said.

Mueller said the NYPD was assisting MTA police with the investigation and was collecting evidence. An NYPD spokeswoman referred all questions about the shooting to the MTA.

The MTA police chief said he and his officers will try to determine where the machine pistol originated.

“We will try to track down where the gun came from, how it got here and how it got into the hands of someone who is on parole for a firearms arrest,” Mueller said.

Since being formed 26 years ago, MTA cops have fired their weapons on just five occasions, agency officials said. This is the third time an MTA police shooting turned fatal.

The last time MTA cops used their firearms was in 2011 on Long Island, when officers accidentally shot an off-duty Nassau County police officer in plain clothes carrying a rifle.