Pedro Hernandez Arrested For Shooting Outside St. Patrick’s Cathedral

The New York City Police Department (NYPD) arrested Pedro Hernandez, 22, an accused career criminal and one-time darling of bail-reform advocates on an attempted murder warrant Monday after failing to turn himself in as planned.

It was about 3:30 p.m. when the authorities apprehended Hernandez in The Bronx and took him to the Midtown North Precinct in Manhattan, where they booked him until they took him to court in handcuffs at 4:40 p.m. He was wearing a blue suit and white shirt and looked stoic as detectives ushered him to a black unmarked police car that drove them to his pending arraignment. Hernandez faces charges of attempted murder, attempted assault, reckless endangerment, and criminal possession of a weapon.

The authorities sought Hernandez on an attempted murder charge stemming from an Aug. 28 shooting outside St. Patrick’s Cathedral in a dispute over a three-card monte game, New York Post reported. He has a lengthy criminal record and three open gun cases in the Bronx. Also, he was once championed by criminal-justice advocates who fought for him to be released after serving one year at Rikers Island on a 2015 robbery case.

Moreover, Hernandez has been arrested multiple times after his release from Rikers in July 2017. He chose to stay in jail rather than take a plea deal for an attempted murder he didn’t commit.

In July 2019, the authorities said he was wanted for endangering children after he allegedly threw a glass bottle at the front passenger side window of a minivan. Police added that several months earlier, he was also arrested in connection with a robbery and slashing, PIX11 reported. Hernandez had refused to enter a plea deal in the case and was jailed until a liberal advocacy group bailed him out for $100,000.

The Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Foundation is one of those who advocates calling for lower or no bail in many cases. According to them, the system discriminates against minorities and the poor. Bronx prosecutors dropped the robbery case against Hernandez when a key witness got cold feet. Only to see him in handcuffs for other alleged crimes again and again.

Hernandez said the police targeted him and sued the NYPD on accusations of false arrest, the New York Daily News reported.

Lately, he is accused of trying his hand at three-card monte, a thoroughly known rigged urban sidewalk hustle, at about 5:45 p.m. on Aug. 28, after losing cash and a gold chain. Irate over his loss, Hernandez followed the two men pulling off the hustle to their red Mercedes-Benz. He allegedly fired a shot into the vehicle and pursued the car in his own black BMW.

The chase ended at the Palace Hotel's parking garage where one of the three-card monte operators dropped his cash and jewelry on the ground and took off. Hernandez then took a hold of his items from the ground and left the scene. The cops had been searching for him since.