Koran Irvine, 46, was driving home from his job at Con Edison on the George Washington Bridge when, prosecutors say, a retired New York police detective tailgated his car, pulled alongside and fired one shot through the rear passenger window. Irvine, a Black husband and father of two, died after his car veered across four lanes and hit the median.
The man accused, Victor Romero, 62, retired from the NYPD in 2001. He is free on a $1 million bond while the case against him keeps changing shape.
Romero was first arrested on a murder charge. At his arraignment Thursday, Oct. 22, the Manhattan district attorney’s office filed first-degree manslaughter instead, and Romero pleaded not guilty, according to ABC News’s report on the hearing. NY1 reported that the office would present the case to a grand jury. Atlanta Black Star reported Wednesday that the grand jury has now indicted him on second-degree murder, and that he remains out on bond. That indictment was not yet confirmed by a second outlet when this was written. His next court date is Nov. 23, according to that report.
What prosecutors describe is a near-collision on the approach to the bridge on Oct. 20. Irvine’s Volkswagen swerved into another lane and nearly hit Romero’s Range Rover. Surveillance video, prosecutors say, shows the Range Rover following Irvine’s car closely before pulling to its right. Romero is accused of fleeing, then surrendering a loaded revolver to police. ABC News reported that he told officers he always carries the gun.
Irvine’s widow, Patricia, told reporters the family wants him held to account. “He needs to pay. That’s it,” she said, adding that it was “unacceptable” for the man accused to be “walking around.” His sister Zeria said at the arraignment that she was “fuming” to sit behind the man accused of killing her brother. More than US$190,000 has been raised for Irvine’s widow and their children, who are 11 and 14.
The case turns on a question Black families have asked for generations: how seriously the system treats the killing of a Black man by someone with a badge in his past and a gun on his hip. Romero was a police officer for years and still carried a firearm. A first-degree manslaughter charge carries a lower sentence than second-degree murder in New York, and prosecutors moved from one to the other within a week.
The grand jury’s vote, if confirmed, moves the case to the full murder charge. Romero is due back in court Nov. 23.
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