Officials decry wild Maspeth street takeover as police seek suspects
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Police are looking for suspects in connection with a car meetup and street takeover in Maspeth over the weekend. Screenshot via social media
By Ryan Schwach
Police are looking for eight suspects allegedly involved in a raucous street takeover in Maspeth on Saturday night that has a local official up in arms.
A video recorded of the Saturday takeover that later went viral on social media showed dozens of people crowding the intersection of Eliot Avenue and 69 Street in Maspeth, lighting a ring of fire and watching as cars did donuts in the street and around the flames.
One of the vehicles doing donuts had a Palestinian flag hanging out of the window.
The wild incident has a councilmember and locals calling for accountability less than six months after a similar incident in Northern Queens devolved into an attack on a local resident and public outage.
Police arrived on scene shortly after the meet up began and the crowd quickly dispersed from the Queens intersection.
According to the NYPD, cops responded to reports of drag racing just before 2 a.m. on Saturday. When they arrived, they saw a blue car doing donuts, as well as a silver BMW and white BMW.
Two individuals allegedly leaped onto the hood of an NYPD car, cracking the windshield and then fleeing.
No injuries were reported as a result of the incident.
Police put out images of eight suspects wanted for reckless endangerment and criminal mischief, as well as vehicles of interests on Monday.
Local Councilmember Phil Wong decried the incident as an affront to a good quality of life in the Western Queens neighborhood.
“I’ve seen the videos, and what happened at 69th Street and Eliot Avenue is disgusting,” he said in a statement over the weekend. “This kind of reckless behavior is an attack on our quality of life, and it cannot be tolerated.”
“These takeovers and the ongoing late-night car meetups blasting music are exactly the kind of chaos my office is working to stop,” he added.
In November, a similar incident occurred in the Malba section of Northern Queens, which devolved into an assault on a local homeowner.
In that incident, the victim came out of his house after hearing cars burning out on the street. He went out to his lawn with his wife and a baseball bat and told a group of around 10 people to leave.
Around six of the people at the car meetup surrounded the man and began to threaten him.
The group allegedly then began kicking, punching and stomping the man. At one point, the victim’s wife attempted to get them to stop, but was punched in the mouth.
Justin Aguilera, a 19-year-old from Far Rockaway, was arrested in connection with the illegal car meetup-turned-beating.
On Monday, Wong said he had a scheduled meeting with Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch for Tuesday to discuss the incident.
“Our neighborhoods deserve to feel safe, and I will continue working closely with our law enforcement partners to make sure they have the support needed to prevent incidents like this moving forward,” he said.
