NYC man who jumped off floating Bronx jail barge tells judge she’d do the same
The man who escaped from the Bronx’s floating jail barge last month told a federal judge Thursday that if she experienced the conditions of his confinement, she would have tried to jump ship as well.
David Mordukhaev, 30, admitted he broke the window of his cell in the Vernon C. Bain Center jail known as “The Barge” on July 10 and jumped out, sparking a 12-hour manhunt across the five boroughs.
“If you watched the videos of what’s going on there, you’d escape yourself, Your Honor,” Mordukhaev told Brooklyn Federal Judge Carol Amon when she noted that he didn’t seem very apologetic during a hearing. Mordukhaev pleaded guilty to the escape as a violation of his supervised release on a 2017 oxycodone distribution case.
He was being held at Vernon C. Bain Center on separate state charges when he slipped out, and could still face charges from the Bronx district attorney for the escape, federal prosecutors said.
The Correction Department realized the Borough Park native wasn’t in his cell at 4:30 a.m. on July 10, authorities said. The jail immediately went into lockdown as officers searched for him. Before his escape, Mordukhaev took off all his jail-issued clothing, police said.
After he got out, he contacted a friend who ordered his girlfriend to give Mordukhaev her car to drive to California, but he was recaptured before he could get out of New York, federal prosecutors said.
Roman Nikoghosyan, the pal who tried to help Mordukhaev beat it out of the state, was caught on wiretap talking to the detainee after he few the coop.
Nikoghosyan was arrested 10 days later, for his ties to the “KavKaz Nation,” a gang connected to the Caucasus region in Europe. The crew has terrorized Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, authorities said.
The alleged gangbanger told his mom to let Mordukhaev crash on her couch and promised the escapee he would send him money on a cash app, prosecutors said.
Morukhaev’s lawyer, Michael Schneider, denied his client is a member of KavKaz Nation.
Though Mordukhaev pleaded guilty to the single charge of escape Thursday, he was charged with 29 other offenses, including violating his supervised release, driving with a suspended license, leaving the state without permission and failing to get in contact with his probation officer.
“In all my years on the bench ... I don’t believe I’ve ever seen anyone charged with 29 violations of supervised release,” Amon noted, before sentencing Mordukhaev to another 21 months in prison.
Mordukhaev also faces up to 55 years in prison on three state indictments which include charges of robbery, criminal impersonation and leaving the scene of an accident for allegedly robbing a man in Brooklyn while pretending to be a cop in August 2020.
