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Details Emerge About the Greenwich Village Gunman
By
Jen Chung
Published Mar 17, 2007
Modified Mar 7, 2008
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By
Jen Chung
Published Mar 17, 2007
Modified Mar 7, 2008
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The papers take a look at the life of David R. Garvin, the man who shot and killed a restaurant employee and then two auxiliary police officers in a shocking Greenwich Village incident Wednesday night.
Garvin's brother Charles Garvin spoke extensively with the Daily News, that his ex-marine brother said to him two weeks ago, "If anything ever happens to me, remember the name Morales." The employee at DeMarco's Pizza was named Alfredo Romero Morales, and Charles Garvin said that his brother claimed there was a "cocaine element, a criminal element, at the Raccoon Lodge that made him nervous." Garvin had been fired from the Raccoon Lodge two weeks before; Morales's wife said Morales never worked there and that Morales was known as "Romero." Still, the police cannot find a motive. An early theory was that Garvin was trying to avenge the firing of a friend who also worked DeMarco's, but the friend said he did not leave on bad terms.
Garvin's brother thinks his brother was paranoid, after being kicked out of the army, troubled marriages, covering crime for newspapers, problems with jobs, and falling into debt. "He had gone into feeling that people were following him and watching him. He was trying to get control of it with herbal remedies. He knew he had a problem." He added that he wanted to give a human face to Garvin.
The Post spoke to an ex-girlfriend who noted his irrational behavior when the dated in 2002 and 2003:
"I was shaken and upset to find out about this tragedy, but not surprised," the woman told The Post.
"I broke up with Dave because I could no longer deal with his volatile personality. When I first met him, he was as sweet as pie. Slowly, over the next several months, I began to see his true colors," she said.
"The most ridiculous thing to me was when he got so angry at his pet ferret that he actually flipped over his sofa . . . trying to get at the poor thing, and then he got angry at me because I wasn't helping him wreck his living room. That scared me."
A cop said, ""He's just a guy who went nuts."
Amanda Cooley Davis, an actress who was cast in Garvin's short film, Stand-ups, told the NY Times she stored emails from him in a folder labeled "Crazy" "in case, she said, she ever needed a restraining order." Garvin had sent Davis emails proclaiming his romantic interest in her while she had a boyfriend: "He wouldn’t accept that I didn’t feel the same way.” A woman who had been previously cast in the role that Davis got said Garvin "changed his mind after she told him that she was married and was unable to accompany him and a friend to dinner one evening."
A wake was held for auxiliary police officer Nicholas Pekearo last night; his funeral was scheduled for today. Auxiliary police officer Eugene Marshalik's family is in mourning, with a funeral scheduled for tomorrow. Mayor Bloomberg announced that the city would grant city awards to the Pekearo and Marshalik families and will help them apply for state and federal money given to public safety officers (the city's aid will be $66,000 each, while state and federal aid could total up to $411,000). Bloomberg said, "We will do everything we can do get them all of this money. But having said that, it's just money. It doesn't bring back their lives." He also said the city would offer services and other help to Morales's wife.
Photograph of Bleecker Street in the wake of the shooting by Mark Lennihan/AP
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Jen Chung
Jen Chung is a former WNYC and Gothamist editor.
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