The wounded tenant is a Mexican immigrant who speaks no English, police said, and may not have understood cops’ commands to put down the knife he carried outside to confront a man he said was trying to dislodge the air conditioning unit from his window on E. 148th St. near Courtlandt Ave. in Mott Haven.

It was the shooting victim who called 911 before dashing to the hallway and through a door leading to an alley over which the air conditioner hangs.

Separate videos show the victim in the alley, and one cop opening fire when he returns to the hallway. The shooting video shows the officer squeezing the trigger at a person off camera.

Police said a “butcher knife” was recovered from the scene.

“When he called, he spoke Spanish,” said Rohan Griffith, commanding officer of NYPD’s force investigation unit.

Griffith said officials need to determine if the officers and the tenant understood each other.

Neighbor Juan Rivera, 78, said cops responded quickly.

“I was walking my dog and so many cops came into the building,” Rivera said. “The detectives told me someone tried to steal the guy’s air conditioner [and] he went after the guy with a knife. They told him to drop the knife.”

Police said it was unclear if the man in the alley was trying to actually steal the appliance or remove it to get into the apartment.

The shooting happened within seconds.

“Bang, bang. Two shots,” Rivera said. “When they brought him out he was bleeding. I don’t think the shooting is totally right. … They didn’t waste any time shooting him.”

Neighbor David Bermudez, 25, said he also heard two shots.

“The lady cop shot him,” Bermudez said. “The guy was laid out. He was bleeding. I saw a lot of blood. I was scared and confused. The cops were telling me ‘you have to leave, you can’t stay here.’ The Bronx is getting worse and worse everyday.”

Griffith said police are still searching for the would-be thief.

Jasmin Thompson, 25, fled to a southern state after the Jan. 7 fracas, which left Jennira Roundtree mortally wounded after she was stabbed numerous times outside her building in the West Brighton Houses on Henderson Ave. near Broadway, prosecutors said Monday.

While on the lam, she was featured on podcast LFTG radio, where she told host Elliott Carterr she’s “not a killer.”

The altercation that Roundtree, 43, intervened in was sparked by a social media dispute involving her 13-year-old daughter and other girls, police sources and the victim’s family previously told the Daily News.

Also involved in the feud was Thompson’s cousin, whom the woman claims Roundtree’s son punched in the face a week before the confrontation, which police said involved about 20 women and girls.

“[I said] we need to speak to the parents,” Thompson said on the podcast. “Because this needs to end, because we all live in the same hood.”

But when Thompson arrived to the building to straighten out the disagreement, Roundtree and other women were swinging a golf club and a sock filled with locks, ready for a fight, according to the woman and her attorney, Mario Gallucci.

“They didn’t even talk, they just on that,” Thompson told Carterr. “She wasn’t being a mom, a real mom. I’m a mom.”

Thompson denied neighbors’ claims that a mob of 20 confronted Roundtree’s 12-year-old daughter, calling it “only like four of us and it was 20 of them.”

After Roundtree was stabbed numerous times about her body, Thompson claims she picked up the bloodied knife as she was “scared for” her life.

“Look, the mom is already on the floor,” Thompson narrated as she showed the podcast host video of the brawl. “So how are you all saying I did it?”

Thompson turned herself into the NYPD’s 120th Precinct Monday morning — six days after the fatal attack. She was charged with murder, manslaughter, assault and criminal possession of a weapon. She was held without bail following an arraignment in Staten Island Criminal Court.

Jasmin Thompson surrendered at the 120th Precinct stationhouse with her lawyer, Mario Gallucci, who told the Daily News the woman killed, Jennira Roundtree, 43, “was beating my client’s sister and mother with a golf club.”

“And my client reacted to that,” he said. “[Roundtree] also brought down a sock filled with locks and started swinging it at people. My client’s mother has bruises on her back.”

The stunning slay happened last Tuesday evening outside the West Brighton Houses on Henderson Ave. near Broadway, where Roundtree lived.

The brawl Roundtree intervened in was sparked by a social media dispute involving her 13-year-old daughter and other girls, police sources and the victim’s family said.

Gallucci said Thompson’s 19-year-old sister was at the center of the tensions.

It exploded in deadly violence when Roundtree’s daughter was confronted by about 20 girls and young women.

Friends of the daughter ran into the building to summon her older sister for help, according to neighbors, and Roundtree was also alerted.

“The mother went outside in defense of her daughter,” a police source told the Daily News at the time. “One person approached and stabbed her.”

Roundtree was rushed by medics to Richmond University Medical Center but she could not be saved.

“This was a dispute between kids and then the adults got involved,” a police source said Monday.

The killer ran off but by Wednesday the NYPD had identified Thompson as the suspect and circulated her photo on a wanted poster.

While on the lam, the wanted woman appeared as a guest on podcast LFTG radio, where she claimed she only picked up the bloodied knife after Roundtree was stabbed.

“Look, the mom is already on the floor,” Roundtree narrated as she showed host Elliott Carterr video of the brawl. “So how are you all saying I did it?”

“I picked it up,” she added. “I’m scared for my life. I picked up y’all weapon.”

Alternatively, Gallucci said it was tragic that someone was killed but claims Thompson’s use of force was justified, given the weapons he says Roundtree was wielding. He also said cellphone video backs his client’s self-defense claim.

Despite the claim, during an arraignment in Staten Island Criminal Court Monday afternoon, prosecutors alleged Thompson fled the city and headed to an unnamed southern state after the slaying. At least seven family members including a cousin and her boyfriend showed up in court to support her.

“This defendant while armed with a sharp object stabbed the victim in the chest, causing the victim’s demise,” a prosecutor said in court.

Thompson is also charged with slashing a second victim’s arm during the melee. She was ordered held without bail and is due back in court Friday.

Roundtree was doing what any loving mother would do, a relative said on Wednesday.

“She only wanted to protect her baby,” the devastated relative told The News. ”She only went outside to get her child in the house, only to find her child with a pack of more than a dozen girls on her. She tried to pull her child away and they all jumped her.”

“I’m not sure how it started,” the relative added. “But I do know it shouldn’t have ended in murder.”

In the days before her death, Roundtree, who worked as a security guard, according to neighbors, appears to have been involved in her own social media scrum.

“Just punched a MF with both hands at the same time I’m not playing this year,” she posted on Facebook Jan. 3.

“B—h I’m an officer now so no I’m not fighting I’m gonna let you swing n pop your a– then you gonna go to jail for a minimum of 7 years,” she posted in her final Facebook message a day later, just three days before she was killed. “F–k wit me if you want to.”

The relative believes that dispute was unrelated to her daughter’s.

In addition to murder, Thompson was charged with manslaughter, assault and weapon possessions. She has prior arrests for assault, petty larceny and reckless endangerment, all in 2019, a police source said, and two assault arrests that year. Last year, she was hit with a contraband charge while behind bars, the source said.

She did not answer reporter’s questions as she was lead out of the stationhouse to appear in Staten Island Criminal Court.

Michael Bookhart was knifed in the chest in the home he shared with the suspect on E. 138th St. near Brook Ave. in Mott Haven about 10:40 p.m. on Sunday, cops said.

The victim’s 23-year-old girlfriend, whose name was not immediately released, was arrested at the scene. Charges against her were pending.

A neighbor whose apartment shares a wall with the unit where the man was stabbed said she heard the couple arguing for about two hours, but she didn’t know any violence occurred until police arrived later.

“[Cops] knocked on my door to ask what I heard,” said Tiffany Boyce, 39. “All I heard was her yelling and then I heard the cops come.”

“It’s a regular thing for them. Always fighting every night,” Boyce added.

Medics rushed Bookhart to Lincoln Hospital, but he could not be saved.

“I never saw them together,” she added. “I just usually see her.”

The suspect was nice to her when they passed each other in the hallway.

“She just seemed normal,” Boyce said. “One time I locked myself out and she let me in.”

She said Bookhart was pleasant, too.

“He was quiet,” Boyce said. “I just seen him in passing, going up the stairs. He kept to himself.”

Cops were called to the second-floor apartment on E. 148th St. near Courtlandt Ave. in Mott Haven around 5:40 p.m. by a 32-year-old man who said someone was trying to remove the cooling unit, police said.

But when officers arrived, they couldn’t find the 911 caller, and began to walk down the stairs in an “extremely tight stairwell” to the first floor, Deputy Chief Rohan Griffith of the NYPD’s Force Investigation Division said at a news conference Sunday night.

As two female officers approached the first-floor landing, they spotted a man coming up the staircase from a side entrance with a kitchen knife in hand.

“One officer gave the male verbal commands, telling him to, ‘Wait! Wait! Wait!’ and also telling him to ‘Drop it! Drop it!’ while also putting her hand up to motion for him to stop,” Griffith said.

When the man continued to “swiftly approach” the officers, one fired her weapon, striking the man in the torso, he added.

Police believe the caller was confronting the air conditioner thief in the building’s side courtyard right before he ran into the stairwell and encountered the cops.

Griffith said police are still searching for the would-be thief, who remained “unidentified” late Sunday.

In court papers filed late last year, the city’s Corporation Counsel asked a judge to toss a Freedom of Information Law petition filed by 9/11 survivor advocates and families of 9/11 illness victims that demands the city’s Department of Environmental Protection hand over any studies they have about air quality at Ground Zero.

The city stonewalled the request, asking for repeated delays, then filed a motion to dismiss on Nov. 7, 2024, claiming they had already certified no records were found.

“After a diligent search was performed of DEP’s records, no responsive records were found,” city attorneys claimed in court papers, never explaining the steps taken in the search.

Except for a few news articles noting the DEP conducted air quality studies at Ground Zero, attorneys Andrew Carboy and Matthew McCauley, who are representing 9/11 survivors and advocates, have provided no evidence that the DEP has the records they’re seeking, city attorneys said.

“Petitioner’s speculative conjecture is also clearly exemplified by the fact that the same FOIL request was sent to five City agencies, the Office of the Mayor, and the New York City Council in what can fairly be described as a fishing expedition since all of these entities perform vastly different functions and would therefore keep vastly different records,” the city noted in court papers.

A spokesman for the city’s Law Department said speculating that the documents do exist “is not a reason to challenge” the city’s response.

“As we have maintained, the DEP has certified that following a diligent search, records relating to the Petitioner’s FOIL request were not found,” spokesman Lucian Chalfen said.

Carboy said the city has simply shrugged off the important search and was “denigrating our Freedom of Information requests.”

“The City resists, with maximum effort, disclosure of its September 11th archives,” Carboy said in court papers responding to the dismissal request. “It matters not if the record requester is a first responder, surviving family member, member of Congress or member of the City Council. All requests are met with delay and, ultimately, denial.

“The 2001 World Trade Center disaster is, inarguably, an event without parallel in City history,” Carboy continued. “Why then, decades later, do the City’s own records of the collapse, air quality monitoring, and assessments of public health risks from reopening the Financial District and surrounding neighborhoods and schools, remain secret?”

In letters to Congress, the city admitted it has the records, but “were seeking a quid pro quo, in the form of financial aid and additional legal protections from the federal government in order for these documents to finally be released to the public,” Carboy told The News.

“The Mayor’s Office and DEP took the lead in evaluating air quality in lower Manhattan. Decades later, in response to our Freedom of Information requests, the City denies this history,” he said.

The DEP is not the only one failing to find any 9/11 records. The City’s Office of Emergency Management has also not found any studies.

OEM, which worked at Ground Zero for months after the attacks, speculated the studies they made were lost when 7 World Trade Center collapsed — on Sept. 11, 2001.  By that logic, the documents were destroyed before they were written, Carboy said.

One city official said uncovering the paperwork from these 9/11 studies posed a challenge because many documents at the time weren’t digitized, requiring the agencies to dig into decades-old paper records.

The Adams administration has made it clear it does not plan to release any documents until it determines if releasing the information will get the city sued.

“We are aware of requests to produce city documents on the aftermath of the attacks, which would require extensive legal review to identify privileged material and liability risk, and are exploring ways to determine the cost of such a review,” a mayoral spokeswoman said last year.

But the city may soon have to cough up any documents they have about the 9/11 attack.

The City Council has introduced a bill that will direct the Department of Investigation to use its oversight powers to obtain documents detailing what the city knew about toxic air conditions in Manhattan in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.

A council hearing on the bill, which was introduced by City Councilwoman Gale Brewer (D-Manhattan) is scheduled for Jan. 29.

“At this point what may be the only way forward is for the City Council to take action, pass Council Member Brewer’s bill directing the Department of Investigations to finally get to the truth,” said Benjamin Chevat, executive director of 911 Health Watch, which is a plaintiff in the lawsuit.

The FOIL request asked for “documents, reports, assessments” about the toxins, dust and fumes that came from the destroyed World Trade Center and other information about future health threats to 9/11 first responders and survivors.

An estimated 400,000 people were exposed to Ground Zero toxins on 9/11 and the days that followed, including 91,000 first responders, 57,000 residents who lived south of Canal St. and 15,000 students and administrators at lower Manhattan schools, according to city statistics.

The stickup at the “G Spot,” an illegal cards and dice club in Brownsville, turned into a bloodbath, with four people shot, including Rodney Maxwell, 58, a longtime Bellevue Hospital employee and father of three who was moonlighting there as a security guard.

Rodney Maxwell

Maxwell had survived a week-long bout with COVID in March 2020 — during the terrifying early days of the pandemic, when overwhelmed doctors were struggling to handle the deadly virus — only to die six months later from bullet wounds to the back and chest.

Brian Castro, Musah Coward and Charles Powell, all face federal murder and robbery charges, with jury selection in their case starting Monday in Brooklyn Federal Court.

Coward, an accused gun seller who police said had ties to Brownsville, picked the den as a target and drove Powell, Castro and a fourth man to the Hegeman Ave. gambling location on Oct. 7, 2020, according to prosecutors.

The fourth alleged robber’s name is redacted in court documents; one filing describes him as a cooperating witness for the government.

Maxwell was working security at the gambling den, which had a front room facing Hegeman, an inner room where cards, craps and dominoes were played, and a backyard patio.

As prosecutors tell it in their court filings, Coward parked a Honda Civic around the corner, and stayed in the car while the other men rounded the corner and walked inside, single-file.

They then stormed through the front and back rooms toward the patio — Powell in front, followed by Castro and unnamed accomplice.

But Maxwell, the bouncer that night, jumped into action, struggling with the unnamed robber in an attempt to disarm him, the feds allege.

Their fight spilled from the inner room to the front room, which was covered by a surveillance camera. Castro rushed in to help his partner in crime, shooting Maxwell in the back, according to the feds.

The shot didn’t take Maxwell out of the fight, though, and Powell started spraying bullets at people fleeing into the backyard, wounding three men, federal prosecutors allege.

Maxwell was still fighting the unnamed robber, so Powell ran into the front room shot him again in the chest, mortally wounding him, the feds allege.

More than a month later, Castro was smoking pot in a car with an acquaintance and told him about the robbery, which he called a “lick,” saying his crew got $20,000, and describing how he shot Maxwell before his gun jammed, according to court papers. It turned out the acquaintance was recording their chat, court filings reveal.

A Patterson, N.J., police detective working with a federal gang task force recognized Powell and Castro after seeing surveillance photos the following April, and that led to Powell’s arrest in October 2021 after he got into a car crash in Clifton, N.J.

Castro and Coward were named in an indictment and arrested in March 2023.

The trio’s defense attorneys have challenged that detective’s ID in a failed attempt to get cell phone evidence thrown out.

The defense lawyers have also questioned whether the killing was part of a robbery, and Powell’s attorney, Murray Singer, argued in a Dec. 29, 2024 letter that Castro’s recorded statements about the shooting were bluster meant to boost his “street cred.”

“Had the purpose of the plan — to commit a robbery — not been successful, and Castro, having been fought off by intended victims, gotten nothing but instead had killed someone, this could be viewed as humiliating,” Singer wrote. “It makes sense, then, that Castro would try to puff up the incident.”

The lawyers for all three suspects on Thursday declined to comment.

Waldo Mejia is accused of randomly killing Caleb Rijos as the boy walked to school Friday morning. At the time of the slaying, Mejia, 29, faced an ongoing criminal case for allegedly kicking a neighbor’s door and damaging their Ring doorbell in the suspect’s apartment building in Mott Haven.

The trouble in Mejia’s building on Alexander Ave. near E. 139th St. began when the 43-year-old neighbor was awoken around 4 a.m. by Mejia, who apparently didn’t have a key.

Mejia was pounding on the building’s front door and ringing the neighbor’s intercom, trying to get inside.

The next day, the neighbor encountered Mejia in the staircase and confronted him about the commotion.

“I said, ‘Listen, why you be [ringing] my door?’ ” the neighbor recalled. “You got no keys, ask for the super.”

That conversation apparently set Mejia off.

“Next day, he hit my door — boom!” the neighbor said. “Kicked it hard.”

Ring footage shows Mejia trying to remove his neighbor’s doorbell camera’s lens before getting frustrated about 7 p.m. on Nov. 27. He then angrily kicked the door before retreating upstairs. About 30 minutes later, he returned with a long kitchen knife and stabbed the camera multiple times, cracking it, the creepy footage shows.

Mejia was arrested for harassment and criminal mischief that day, but the charges are not bail eligible so he was cut loose after his arraignment in Bronx Criminal Court.

His quick release and return to the building unsettled his neighbor.

“I got nervous,'” the neighbor said. “I saw him. I said, ‘Oh, my God, this guy’s here.’ ”

Since then, the neighbor has made sure Mejia is not around before leaving home.

“Every time I go by the stairs — my wife is the same way — we had to check my camera to see if the guy left,” the neighbor told The News. “I don’t want nothing to happen to me!”

Neighbors had good reason to be scared of Mejia.

On Jan. 5, Mejia allegedly jumped a 38-year-old stranger heading down the stairs at the Third Ave.-E. 138th St. subway station a block from Mejia’s home, then knifed him in the left arm. The blade perforated the limb, cut an artery and entered the man’s chest cavity, according to a criminal complaint.

The victim needed lifesaving surgery, but he survived. The attacker got away.

Then about 9:30 a.m. on Friday, Mejia ambushed Caleb near E. 138th St. and Lincoln Ave., half a block from the subway attack and close to where the high schooler lived, according to cops

Mejia jammed a serrated kitchen knife twice into the boy’s chest, cutting through his heart and lung, according to cops. The teen ran off and called his father, begging his dad for help with his final breaths.

It took a day for cops to nab Mejia for the slaying. NYPD detectives conducted a 1,000-foot radius search of the area and checked pervious crimes involving knives “and got an interesting result,” NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch said at a Saturday news conference about the arrest in Caleb’s killing. “Just 750 feet away there was an earlier crime in which an individual stabbed a Ring camera.”

“When detectives showed the arresting officer in that case the images taken from Friday’s stabbing, she immediately recognized the perp as Mr. Mejia,” Tisch added.

“Officers now knew who they were looking for and where he lived. They obtained footage from the same Ring camera he had stabbed weeks prior and saw him leaving his residence a few minutes before Friday’s stabbing.”

Cops grabbed Mejia returning to his building in the first minutes of Saturday. He was wearing the same sneakers and pants he wore during the fatal stabbing about 15 hours earlier, cops said.

“And he was in possession of a bloody knife,” Tisch said.

Mejia has a long criminal history, including four unsealed arrests, Tisch said. Two of those arrests involved knives while a third involved a gun.

Mejia was ordered held without bail during his arraignment on murder charges in Bronx Criminal Court on Saturday. “My name is Waldo Mejia, so get ready to f—–g suffer along with me!” the suspect shouted during his chaotic court appearance.

The neighbor with the damaged Ring doorbell said he was shocked when police knocked on his door Saturday to tell him about Caleb’s killing.

“I feel bad for the mother,” he said. “It’s very bad.”

He mused Mejia might have stabbed him, too, if given the chance.

“You open the door, the guy comes with a knife, and then what? I’ll be dead,” the neighbor said.

“I feel good that the guy is in jail because, you know, I don’t want nothing to happen to nobody. … I feel good. Like, I feel a little safe now. I feel better, Man.”

The victim was driving the van on Utica Ave., near Linden Blvd., around 12:55 p.m. when he was shot, cops said. Medics took him to Kings County Hospital, but he couldn’t be saved.

Police were looking for a second white van that fled the scene. An NYPD spokeswoman couldn’t immediately say if the shooter was also driving a dollar van.

A small bullet hole could be seen in the driver’s side window of the victim’s van, which apparently kept going down Utica before crashing into a Kia sedan.

Cops have made no arrests.

“My name is Waldo Mejia, so get ready to f–king suffer along with me!” the 29-year-old suspect shouted during his chaotic arraignment in Bronx Criminal Court.

Mejia faces murder, manslaughter and other charges for the Friday morning killing of 14-year-old Caleb Rijos near E. 138th St. and Lincoln Ave. as the victim was walking to school, just down the block where the suspect lives. Judge Margaret Martin ordered a mental health exam after his extended outburst in court.

At first, Mejia stood quietly before the judge, wearing the same black hoodie and gray pants as when police led him out of the 40th Precinct stationhouse a day earlier.

But his demeanor changed when a court officer started to touch his handcuffs. He turned his head to her and said, “Let me go. Let me go. I’mma catch you when I can.”

The court officer stayed quiet and Mejia ranted, yelling out profane remarks as court officers led him out of the room to cool down.

“I’m with Satan!” he yelled. “Pieces of s–t a– people! … Get ready to f–king suffer!”

Mejia’s defense lawyer, Paul Horowitz, sat down in the courtroom’s front row and exhaled, “Oh, boy.”

After about ten minutes Mejia was called back to see the judge.

Mejia walked in quietly and stood pin straight, looking forward at Martin, as he was arraigned for both Caleb’s murder and the attempted murder of a 38-year-old man police say he stabbed on Jan. 5 just half a block from where Caleb was killed.

In that case, Mejia jumped a stranger walking down stairs at the Third Ave.-E. 138th St. subway station, plunging a large knife into his left arm with such force that the blade perforated the limb, cut an artery and entered the victim’s chest cavity, according to a criminal complaint.

The victim needed life-saving surgery.

At the defense attorney’s request, the judge approved a mental health exam for Mejia, holding him without bail until his next court date Friday.

As the hearing ended, Mejia had another outburst, telling court officers as he was escorted out, “I’mma snap your neck!”

His screams and curses could he heard through the door as he was led out of the courtroom and he his rants included remarks about the “White House” and “al Qaeda,” a court officer said after the drama ended.

“He’s nuts,” the officer told reporters.

Mejia cursed out reporters Saturday as he was led from the Bronx NYPD stationhouse, screaming, “I don’t know what the f–k y’all doing here on this planet!…. Y’all f–k around and I’mma beat your a– like a f—ing adult when I catch y’all!”

Mejia plunged a serrated kitchen knife twice into the Caleb’s chest, cutting through his heart and lung, police said. The teen, who was only a block from home when stabbed, stayed alive long enough to call his father, begging for help in his final moments.

Mejia’s arrest came as Gov. Hochul announced she’d introduce legislation in the state budget making it easier to involuntarily commit those suffering from mental illness to hospitals. The governor cited an uptick in violent crimes on the NYC subway system — including an incident where a homeless woman was fatally set on fire aboard a Brooklyn F train in Coney Island.

On Saturday, NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch described Mejia as “a violent recidivist with documented mental health interactions with the NYPD.”

“The systems we have in place to deal with repeat offenders and people with severe mental health issues continue to fail us,” she added.

Less than two months before Caleb’s killing, Mejia went ballistic in his own apartment building on Alexander Ave., less than 750 feet away from where he ambushed the teen, police said. In that Nov. 27 incident, he pounded on a neighbor’s door and used a knife to repeatedly stab the 43-year-old victim’s Ring doorbell camera, busting it, cops said.

He was arrested on criminal mischief and harassment charges, which are not eligible for bail. His release left his targeted neighbor fearing for his life, the neighbor told The Daily News.