Quantcast

The DNAinfo archives brought to you by WNYC.
Read the press release here.

NYPD Detective Who Accidentally Shot Japanese Tourist Now Charged With DWI

By  Aidan Gardiner and Trevor Kapp | March 19, 2013 2:35pm | Updated on March 19, 2013 5:50pm

 Detective Washington Mosquera was charged with drunken driving Monday and suspended from the NYPD, police said.
Detective Washington Mosquera was charged with drunken driving Monday and suspended from the NYPD, police said.
View Full Caption
Flickr/Linus Henning

CYPRESS HILLS — An NYPD detective accused of driving drunk — who made news last year when he accidentally shot a Japanese tourist in Brooklyn — became the sixth NYPD employee arrested in four days on Tuesday, officials said.

Washington Mosquera, a 37-year-old detective who works Brooklyn narcotics, allegedly sideswiped an ambulance early Monday morning after swerving into oncoming traffic in East New York.

Mosquera was driving a 2000 Ford Windstar near Highland Boulevard and Jamaica Avenue about 1:30 a.m. when he veered into oncoming traffic and struck an FDNY ambulance, according to the criminal complaint and an FDNY spokesman.

Sources say Mosquera was heading home when he crashed his car.

Macdonald Eze, an EMT who was in the ambulance at the time, told prosecutors that the detective was red-eyed and slurring his words, reeked of booze and couldn't walk straight, documents show.

There were no injuries in the crash, an NYPD spokeswoman said.

Mosquera refused to take a breathalyzer test after the accident, and he was immediately charged with driving while intoxicated and driving in the wrong lane. He was also suspended from the NYPD.

Reached by phone Tuesday afternoon, Mosquera declined to comment on the charges.

"I don't want to talk to nobody," he said, but added that he's maintaining a positive outlook. "I'm doing good, thank you, sir."

A year ago, Mosquera, then a member of Brooklyn South Narcotics, accidentally discharged his 9 mm Glock during an East New York drug raid when an ex-con wanted for drug dealing suddenly kicked a protective barrier the cops were also holding. Mosquera's bullet ripped through the floor, grazing sleeping tourist Kyoko Tachimoto, who was visiting a friend.

After the near-tragic incident, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly visited Tachimoto in the hospital and provided a police escort for her to make a pre-scheduled vacation flight to Barbados.

Mosquera is the sixth NYPD employee arrested since Friday, when Officer Miguel Gomez was booked for mounting cameras around his building to spy on a 21-year-old female neighbor.

On Sunday, two other officers — Joseph King and Dennis Munge — were nabbed on St. Patrick's Day in separate drunk driving incidents, cops said.

Traffic agent Denise Johnson, 37, was arrested Friday after cops found stolen goods and fake guns in her car, according to the New York Post. Curline Brown, a 55-year-old NYPD administrative aide, was charged Saturday with criminal possession of a controlled substance, police said.