Retired NYPD Detective Victor Romero Charged With Murder in George Washington Bridge Road-Rage Killing of Father of Two

A retired New York City police detective surrendered to police on Wednesday and was charged with second-degree murder in the shooting death of a father of two on the George Washington Bridge the night before, authorities said.

Victor Romero, 62, of Haverstraw, New York, is accused of shooting Koran Irvine, 46, of Valley Cottage in what the NYPD described as an apparent road-rage encounter on the bridge’s upper level Tuesday evening. Romero retired from the department in 2001 after about seven years on the force, police said.

Shortly after 7 p.m. Tuesday, officers responded to a 911 call about a man shot on the outbound upper-level roadway, the NYPD said. They found Irvine, a Con Edison worker who was off duty, unconscious and unresponsive in the driver’s seat of his car with a gunshot wound to the rear of his right shoulder. He was taken to Englewood Hospital and Medical Center in New Jersey, where he was pronounced dead.

According to published reports, Irvine had been driving a blue Volkswagen Golf across the bridge when his vehicle may have cut off Romero’s car on the ramp from the Henry Hudson Parkway to the upper level. Moments later, the New York Post reported, a single shot fired through Irvine’s rear window struck him in the shoulder and neck, and his car rolled into the median around midspan before stopping.

Arrest and charges

Romero turned himself in at the NYPD’s 33rd Precinct in Upper Manhattan on Wednesday afternoon and was charged with second-degree murder, authorities said. Sources told the New York Post that Romero admitted to investigators that he was the shooter and handed over the gun. Detectives also took his car into NYPD custody and froze his Haverstraw home while they sought a search warrant.

The NYPD has not said publicly what set off the confrontation. A department spokesperson told PEOPLE the shooting “appears to be” connected to road rage but that this “will be determined by investigators.”

Romero joined the NYPD in February 1994 and worked as a narcotics detective in Brooklyn, according to the New York Post. He retired on disability in 2001, a year after he was wounded in an off-duty shootout with armed robbers at his family’s Brooklyn laundromat, during which he fired his service weapon and wounded two suspects, according to the paper.

Bridge closed for hours

Investigators closed parts of the George Washington Bridge, one of the nation’s busiest crossings, for about five hours Tuesday night while they processed the scene. The closure backed up traffic for miles on both sides of the Hudson River. The lanes reopened early Wednesday morning.

Irvine had recently marked 20 years with Con Edison. “We are heartbroken by the tragic loss of a member of the Con Edison family in this senseless act of violence,” a company spokesperson said. “Our deepest condolences go out to his family, friends, colleagues, and everyone who knew and loved him.” A GoFundMe set up for his wife, Patricia, and their children, Lea and Hiro, had raised nearly $110,000 by Wednesday evening, according to the Rockland/Westchester Journal News.

Rockland County Executive Ed Day said the community was grieving. “If the reports are accurate, it is unthinkable that such a senseless act could stem from something as trivial as roadway frustration,” Day said. “No destination, delay, or inconvenience is ever worth more than a human life.”

Reporting based on coverage by the Rockland/Westchester Journal News, the New York Post and PEOPLE.