In the hours leading up to the arrest of the main suspect in the death of a Manhattan woman who was shot and then horrifically thrown in the trash, the suspect pulled a gun on neighbors who surrounded him a nearby park, said cops and a witness.
Chad Irish, 55, was arrested Monday and charged with concealment of a human corpse in the death of 31-year-old Yazmeen Williams. He had not been charged with her murder as of late Tuesday night.
Hours before police carried Irish out of his building on E. 27th St. near Third Ave. in Kips Bay on a stretcher with an angry mob swarming around them, neighbors spotted him in a nearby park.
“He doesn’t ever really come outside,” said local resident Antowne Frazier, 47. “You never come outside, so why you outside now? Things didn’t sit right.”
Rumors had begun swirling around the neighborhood when police discovered Williams’ body around 5 p.m. Friday, making locals think that Irish had something to do with her death, according to Frazier.
The man, who police say is capable of walking but often uses a wheelchair to get around, was seen on surveillance video dragging the corpse as he made his way down the street in a motorized wheelchair.
“We heard the guy in the wheelchair had told [a neighbor] that he wheeled that bag over there,” said Frazier. “A lot of people were approaching him.”
Frazier, who grew up in Irish’s building and knew the victim’s family, confronted the man whom neighbors deemed a suspect.
“I said ‘Yo, what did you do to that young girl?’” Frazier said.
Irish pulled out a gun and “menaced” the crowd that began surrounding him, police and Frazier said.
“He pulled it from under the seat like he was sitting on it,” the man said of the gun. “When I gave chase, everybody in the park followed.”
Irish quickly made his way to his nearby apartment building and went up to his apartment as cops were called to the park.
“He’s very fast in that wheelchair,” said Frazier. “He barreled through people, made it in the elevator and made it upstairs.”
As Irish hunkered down in his apartment, an angry crowd gathered outside the lobby of the building, as seen in surveillance video obtained by the Daily News.
At the same time, police were on their way to the building to take Irish into custody for dumping Williams’s body.
Irish, who had an extensive criminal history dating back to 1985, was attacked by the mob as police and medics carried him out on a stretcher and into a waiting ambulance.
“They said you really helped us,” Frazier said of the police.
Irish remained at the NYPD’s 13th precinct late Tuesday night as police worked to link him to Williams’s death, who was shot in the head at close range sometime after June 23.