An off-duty NYPD detective stabbed 10 times by illegal immigrants still chased the pair barefoot after they ignored his repeated warnings that he was a police officer, prosecutors said.
Detective Jose Mercedes was unloading items from his car on Oct. 2 when two men on a two-wheeler rolled up and demanded his chain. What followed was a bloody robbery attempt, a barefoot chase, a multi-state manhunt, and a Bronx courtroom packed with fellow cops.
Mercedes, a 10-year NYPD veteran, told the attackers in English and Spanish that he was a police officer. They did not stop. Prosecutors say one of them kept stabbing him as the detective tried to make an arrest anyway.
D’Angelo Caraballo and Sneinder Mejia were arraigned Wednesday in the Bronx on a 13-count indictment that includes attempted murder, aggravated assault on a police officer, robbery, grand larceny, and criminal possession of a weapon. Judge Alvin Yearwood ordered both held without bail.
Bronx Assistant District Attorney Paul Irace laid out the attack in court. The pair wore Halloween masks. They went after the detective’s chain. When the confrontation turned violent, Mercedes did what trained officers are taught to do.
Irace told the court the detective kept identifying himself.
"When defendant Mejia was stabbing him numerous times, Mercedes attempted to place him under arrest,"
the prosecutor said. Irace added that Mercedes “identified himself several times, over six times, as a police officer.”
The detective later described the same moment in his own words at a press conference earlier this week.
"I told them in English, I told them in Spanish that I was a police officer. They didn’t care."
Mercedes also said, “I almost died.”
New York Post reporting on the arraignment described the detective as stabbed 10 times in the assault. Irace told the judge the officer still could not use his left hand more than two weeks later and was recovering from surgery.
"As we sit here today, more than two weeks later, he still does not have usage of his left hand and is recovering from that surgery,"
Irace said. He also told the court Mercedes “used his training to stop this from happening.”
Bleeding from the attack, Mercedes still chased Caraballo and Mejia. He ran two blocks barefoot as the pair fled. They did not stay in New York.
Police launched a manhunt. U.S. Marshals later tracked the two men to a basement recording studio in Massachusetts. Authorities extradited them to New York to face the charges.
About half a dozen NYPD detectives filled the Bronx courtroom for the arraignment. The case was treated as an attack on one of their own, an off-duty detective stabbed while trying to stop a robbery and identify himself as law enforcement.
Both defendants were described as having entered the United States from the Dominican Republic. Reporting on the case also stated both men had rap sheets and had been released without bail more than once, with those releases tied to New York’s sanctuary policies that require local authorities to disregard federal immigration holds.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not immediately respond to questions about their status at the time of the reporting. The court record before Judge Yearwood was clear on the immediate outcome: no bail, and a full slate of violent felony counts tied to the Oct. 2 attack on Mercedes.
The sequence prosecutors described is straightforward. Two men on a moped tried to take a chain. An off-duty detective said he was police, again and again, in two languages. One defendant kept stabbing him. Mercedes still tried to arrest the man stabbing him, then ran after both suspects on bare feet.
Weeks later he sat with a left hand he still could not use. The men accused of putting him there had already left the state and had to be brought back. A Bronx judge has now locked them up without bail while the attempted-murder case moves forward.
When illegal immigrants with prior records are freed to strike again, the people left bleeding are cops like Jose Mercedes, and the public they are still trying to protect.
