(NEW YORK) — Two NYPD officers will face departmental misconduct charges in the fatal shooting of 19-year-old Win Rozario after he had called 911 during what his family said was a mental distress episode, a police department spokesman confirmed to ABC News.
Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch is charging officers Salvatore Alongi and Matthew Cianfrocco with using excessive force against Rozario when they shot him five times after they say he lunged at them with a pair of scissors in his home in the Ozone Park neighborhood of Queens in March 2024.
Alongi and Cianfrocco were responding to a 911 call from Rozario, who was experiencing what his family said to be a mental distress episode, according to released body camera footage.
The officers entered the apartment, and Rozario at one point grabbed a pair of scissors from a chair in the kitchen and ran at the officers, as his mother, Notan Ava Costa, tried to restrain him, according to police body cam footage. Alongi and Cianfrocco tased Rozario before shooting him five times.
“They shot him with the tasers, and my brother didn’t really go down,” Utsho Rozario, Win Rozario’s younger brother, who was present at the shooting, said in an interview. “So one of the cops pulled out a gun and shot him as my mother was still hugging him.”
Initially, police leaders said the officers’ actions had been within departmental guidelines, as found by an investigator in the Civilian Complaint Review Board, the oversight agency that reviews complaints against NYPD officers.
John Chell, the department’s chief of patrol at the time of the shooting, said the situation was “quite hectic, chaotic and dangerous right away,” and the officers were within their authority to tase and shoot Rozario to de-escalate the situation.
However, last week, the Civilian Complaint Review Board voted to overrule the investigator who found Alongi and Cianfrocco innocent, finding the pair of officers in violation of using excessive force and abusing their authority.
Patrick Hendry, the president of the Police Benevolent Association, the union that represents NYPD officers, believes the charges against Alongi and Cianfrocco are unjustified and unfair.
“The board simply rubber-stamps its investigators’ findings in almost every other case. But in this case, they threw those findings away because they didn’t fit a predetermined outcome. The data shows that there are only a few board members who are ever willing to stand up and make an independent decision based on the facts and the law. The rest are either too afraid of the anti-police extremists, or they are extremists themselves. Either way, they have deprived these police officers and all police officers of the fairness guaranteed by the (City) Charter,” Hendry said.
An inquiry into the shooting by New York Attorney General Letitia James’s office is ongoing; there have been no criminal charges filed against them.
Copyright © 2025, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.
