Retired NYPD detective arrested in road rage killing on George Washington Bridge

NEW YORK (AP) — A long-retired New York City police detective was arrested Wednesday in the road rage killing of a motorist on the George Washington Bridge, police said.

Victor Romero, 62, was charged with murder in the death of Koran Irvine, 46, who was found just after 7 p.m. Tuesday wounded and unconscious in the driver’s seat of a vehicle on the New Jersey-bound side of the bridge’s upper level.

Irvine, of Valley Cottage, New York, was pronounced dead at a hospital. The shooting near the end of the evening rush snarled traffic for hours on the busy Hudson River span that connects Manhattan and Fort Lee, New Jersey.

Romero, of Haverstraw, New York, retired from the New York Police Department in 2001 after he was wounded in the hand and chest in an off-duty shootout with men attempting to rob his family’s Brooklyn laundromat in June 2000. Using his service weapon, Romero shot one of the men in the stomach, arm and leg, and another man in the legs, according to news accounts from the time.

A telephone number listed for Romero in public records rang unanswered. Information on a lawyer who could comment on his behalf was not immediately available. Romero, a drug detective in Brooklyn, had been working for the NYPD for six years when the laundromat shooting occurred, according to a New York Post article from the time.

Irvine worked for Con Edison, the utility said in a statement, calling the shooting a “senseless act of violence.”

“Our deepest condolences go out to his family, friends, colleagues, and everyone who knew and loved him,” the company said.

Closed bridge lanes reopened about five hours after the shooting, the span’s operator, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, said.

Opened to traffic in 1931, the iconic, double-decked bridge carries around 100 million vehicles each year, according to the Port Authority, which calls it the world’s busiest. The bridge and its entrances are teeming with cameras.

Its entrances can be difficult to navigate, as drivers often veer across packed lanes, causing heavy traffic even under normal circumstances.