Manhattan District Attorney Drops Charges Against Parking Lot Attendant Shot By Suspected Thief

A Manhattan man was shot twice during a struggle with a suspected thief. The two wrestled, and the victim was able to grab the suspect’s gun and shoot him back in retaliation. Although he did so in self-defense, police officers arrested him and charged him with attempted murder.

According to The New York Post, Moussa Diarra, an overnight parking attendant at Carolan’s West 31st Street garage, lies in a hospital bed after confronting a man he saw peering inside several cars in the parking lot. This incident occurred around 5:30 a.m. Saturday morning at the West Side garage. After asking the man, Charles Rhodie, to go outside to inspect what he may have in his bag, Rhodie pulled out the weapon and shot Diarra twice. Diarra wrestled the gun away from Rhodie and fired the weapon back at him, hitting him.

After police officers arrived, they took both men to Bellevue Hospital.

He is still in disbelief that he had been handcuffed to a hospital gurney as he recovers from his injuries. For defending himself against a suspected thief, Diarra was charged with attempted murder, assault, and criminal possession of a weapon charge in the incident.

“I got bullets in me, and I’m chained to a hospital bed, but I didn’t do anything wrong,” the 57-year-old Diarra said to Meyers Parking’s Chief Operating Officer Michael Carolan, who spoke to The New York Post after speaking to the victim.

“One of my first thoughts was a political football, and this gentleman shouldn’t become a political football,” Carolan said. “I can’t get my head around, necessarily, the legal process of charging an individual and having to go through 48 hours for his family and himself.

“Here’s a gentleman who’s just a hardworking individual doing his job. You just think you’re doing the right thing. The altercation happens because of the other individual, not our guy. He’s reacting.”

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg dropped the pending charges against Diarra on Sunday.

Diarra had surgery for the two bullet wounds, one to his gut and the other to his ear, according to Diarra’s attorney, Charles Clayman.