BY LINCOLN ANDERSON | In a furious shootout in the heart of Greenwich Village, a suspect wanted on a warrant for child-molestation charges in California was killed Monday during a close-range gun battle with three officers inside a W. Fourth St. smoke shop.
Charles Mozdir, 32, had been on the lam since 2012, after he was accused of molesting friends’ 7-year-old child.
After the parents’ complaint, police searched his apartment and reportedly found images of child porn and bestiality on his cell phone and computers. Mozdir was arrested but made his $250,000 bail, then skipped out on his next court date.
Authorities recently tracked him to the Smoking Culture NYC store, a bong shop at 177 W. Fourth St., where he had worked for a year. He was living on E. 11th St., with his black Lab, Lucky.
Mozdir was considered armed and dangerous, and reportedly had vowed not to be taken alive.
Around 1 p.m., members of the Regional Fugitive Task Force — including two U.S. marshals and a New York Police Department detective — entered the store to execute the warrant.
According to reports, the detective first went into the store to check if he was there, and then left. They then returned to arrest him, and the gun battle broke out.
While grappling with Muniz, Mozdir pulled a .32-caliber five-shot revolver out of his pocket and got off five shots, striking at least two officers.
The officers fired about 10 times, hitting Mozdir six to eight times.
One or two shots hit Detective Mario Muniz in his bulletproof vest — the vest likely saving his life — but another round got him in the abdomen below the vest. One marshal was shot in the buttocks. The other was wounded in the elbow, but it wasn’t immediately clear if it was by a bullet or flying glass.
Emergency medics tried to resuscitate Mozdir at the scene, but couldn’t save him. He was taken to the new Lenox Hill HealthPlex emergency department, on W. 12th St. and Seventh Ave., where he was pronounced dead on arrival.
All three wounded officers were removed to Bellevue Hospital. Muniz, the most seriously injured, required surgery, but he was reported in stable condition.
The formerly clean-cut Mozdir had disguised his appearance by growing long hair and a bushy beard. Police Commissioner Bill Bratton said the fugitive man had an additional 20 bullets in his pocket at the time of his death.
Although the trail for Mozdir had gone cold, a recent episode of CNN’s “The Hunt,” with John Walsh, in which Mozdir was featured, resulted in a tip from a Florida woman who was close to Mozdir, who gave them his cell phone number. Authorities tracked him to the Village store by pinging his cell phone.
According to CNN, armed with a search warrant, authorities seized items from Mozdir’s apartment Monday night, including a Gateway computer, an Acer laptop, a West Virginia driver’s license and prescription pills.
Mozdir had shared with others his plan to one day kill the young boy’s father for turning him in, Walsh said.
“And now they don’t have to worry if this guy’s coming back to hurt the family or hurt their little boy,” the TV crime-show host said. “So there’s a big sigh of relief tonight that Charles Mozdir is off this planet.”
Mozdir reportedly was also accused in an earlier child assault case when he was babysitting a young boy, who told his mother.
“The Hunt” premiered on CNN on July 13.
“This is our first capture,” Walsh said. “I’m very sorry that those police officers got wounded in the line of duty, but this is one more lowlife that’s off the streets.”
