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Here's What Garland Tyree Told Us During Fatal Standoff With Police

By Aidan Gardiner | August 14, 2015 3:37pm
 Garland Tyree shot a firefighter before he was killed in a shootout with police, officials said.
Garland Tyree shot a firefighter before he was killed in a shootout with police, officials said.
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STATEN ISLAND — The Bloods gang leader calmly answered the cellphone as heavily-armed police surrounded his home after he shot a firefighter Friday morning.

"Yes," Garland Tyree, 38, said over the phone at about 8:30 a.m. as he was inside his locked home at 15 Destiny Court during a standoff with police that began at 6 a.m. when U.S. Marshals came to arrest him.

His voice revealed none of the chaos or the tension of the scene just outside his door.

Law enforcement officers with the Regional Fugitive Task Force made their way into his building, but were driven out by the thick smoke from a smoke grenade he had set off, officials said.

"I don't know what they want. They just kicked my door in," Tyree calmly told DNAinfo New York during a 90-second phone conversation.

When asked what he was thinking about, if he was worried, stressed or scared, he just said, "Yeah."

"I’m a person that takes life as it comes. It is what it is," he said. "I’m at peace."

Tyree, who the FBI believed had risen to the rank of godfather in the Bloods' subset Nine Trey Gang, had been arrested 18 times, including once for a homicide.

Federal authorities were after him for violating the conditions of his supervised release on a weapons charge, officials said.

He did not stay on the phone for long.

"I've got to go. My battery's dying," he said, hanging up.

He didn't pick up again.