By Suzanne Ma, Josh Williams and Heather Grossmann
DNAinfo Reporter/Producers
UPPER WEST SIDE — A drug-dealing dad, his son and father were killed Thursday when a former prison buddy went on a shooting rampage in their Upper West Side home, police said.
The wife and daughter escaped the hail of bullets when the shooter — identified as Hector Quinones, 44 — fell over his own baggy pants, which were dangling around his ankles, Deputy Commissioner Paul Browne said.
Moments later, Quinones plunged to his death from the third-floor fire escape, Browne said.
Police responding to a 1:45 p.m. 911 phone call found the bodies of the victims — Carlos Rodriguez Jr., his father Carlos Rodriguez Sr. and his grandfather, Fernando Gonzalez — sprawled throughout the apartment, located at 492 Amsterdam Ave., between 83rd and 84th Street.
Heroin was also found in the apartment, along with a small amount of cocaine, police said.
“He’s killing my family,” a woman was heard screaming as she ran out of the building just before police arrived. She was later identified by Browne as Giselle Rodriguez, 49, the mother of victim Rodriguez Jr., 24, and wife of Rodriguez Sr., 52.
Giselle had arrived home earlier that afternoon with her 27-year-old daughter, Leyanis, to find Quinones already inside her apartment, wearing leather goves over a pair of latex gloves and holding a .380 semi-automatic weapon, Browne said.
He described how she he struggled with him, causing the gun to go off. The bullet grazed her in the back of the head before she escaped down the stairs and ran out on the street, bleeding and screaming for help.
Giselle's daughter ran into a bedroom where here dead brother and father were and locked the door. Quinones managed to kick down the door, but tripped and fell over his own pants as he chased her into the bedroom, Browne said.
The daughter escaped and phoned the police, he added.
In a press conference at the scene, Browne speculated that Quinones, who was obviously "clumsy," may have fallen off the fire escape because his pants fell down again.
Quinones, who had 14 prior arrests, had served jail time with Rodriguez Sr., who was most recently arrested for possession of a knife, police said.
Both men had previously been arrested on drug charges, and in 2002 Quinones was charged with manslaughter, Browne said.
A small, sealed box was found in the apartment, and police are waiting for a warrant to open it.
Dimitrios Vezyrakis, who owns the pizza place Caesar’s Palace across the street, watched as the bloodied Giselle was loaded into an ambulance. She was brought to St. Luke's in critical condition.
Vezyrakis, who has been in the neighborhood for decades, said the family had come into his restaurant numerous times and they were all very nice people.
"When I saw the police and ambulance, I thought, 'Oh my god' — I've never seen anything like this," Vezyrakis said.
Luz Torres lives across the street and was on her way home from the grocery store when she saw the ambulance in front of the building.
She saw the mother bleeding from the neck as she was transferred from a stretcher into the vehicle.
Torres said she knew the people who lived in the apartment by sight, but she did not know their names. She said that they have another son, a 12-year-old, who attends P.S. 9 around the corner with her granddaughter.
A 35-year-old man who grew up in the neighborhood and played football on Thanksgiving with the youngest victim called him "humble" and "generous."
"Three generations are gone in an instant," he said.
