Controversial EMT killed over a parking spot, cops say
New York City Fire Department EMT Jason Green was accused of ignoring a pregnant woman who died after having an asthma attack at a cafe last year in Brooklyn. (Jan. 10, 2010) Credit: Anthony DelMundo / New York Daily News
An argument over a parking space in Manhattan sparked a shooting that took the life of an emergency medical technician accused last year of ignoring the pleas for a distressed pregnant woman who died, police said.
Jason Green, 32, was hit twice early Sunday after a gunman got out of a car and shot him near the intersection of Vandam and Hudson streets near the SoHo nightclub Greenhouse, police said. He was pronounced dead at New York Downtown Hospital. Green and a friend had been turned away earlier by a club bouncer because the friend was wearing shorts.
An NYPD spokesman was emphatic Monday in saying Green's killing was "definitely not related" to the December incident in which Green allegedly ignored the pleas of co-workers of a pregnant Eutisha Rennix, 25, as she lay gasping for air in a Brooklyn restaurant where she worked.
Green and his co-worker girlfriend, reportedly in the store to buy bagels, allegedly told the workers to call 911. Rennix, who was six months pregnant, died in a hospital, apparently of an asthma attack. She gave birth but the baby died two days later.
"It [the shooting] is not connected at all to this," said Rennix's family lawyer, Sanford Rubenstein. Rubenstein is planning a $20-million-plus lawsuit against the city.
"The fact this tragedy occurred will not affect the litigation," he said.
Green's death hit his Long Island City friends hard. They said it was out of character for the 32-year-old to fight over a parking spot.
"He was not an angry person," said Sivi Benson, 43, who remembers Green as a boy. Benson remembered when Green, as a 15-year-old lost his 23-year-old uncle, who was shot a block from their home at Ravenwoods Houses in Long Island City. After that, he wanted to be a fireman or a police officer, she said.
Benson said Green had just moved out of his mother's apartment and got his own place in Flushing. "He was really happy. He was getting out from the projects and moving in with his girlfriend. He was really loved by everyone here. We called him Fireman Jason."
Benson said neighbors and friends did not know that Green and his EMT partner and girlfriend had been suspended after the Rennix incident.
"No one knew that - it was a real shocker," said Benson.
With Maria Alvarez and
The Associated Press
