He was easy prey.
A hardworking Queens dad was just trying to drive between job sites when he made the tragic decision to pull onto the shoulder to make a legal cellphone call — putting him face-to-face with a maniac who allegedly had just blown away a cop and needed a getaway car.
Raymond Facey, 52, was dragged out of his Toyota on the Cross Island Parkway and allegedly shot in the head by Darrell Fuller, 33 — a career criminal free to kill because of sweetheart deals on past busts for attempted murder and drugs, records show.
Fuller had just gunned down Nassau County cop Arthur Lopez, who had pulled him over for leaving the scene of an accident that left Fuller’s Honda with at least two flat tires, police said.
Fulller, who was locked up for a mere five years for a 2004 attempted murder — when he could have served 25 — found a sitting duck in Facey.
Facey, a truck driver for a company that builds roads and bridges, was headed to a house he owns in Cambria Heights to do carpentry work with a friend.
“He pulled over because he didn’t want to disobey the laws,” said his stricken daughter Abbigail Facey, whom Raymond had called to discuss buying plane tickets to Jamaica, where they were going to help his mom celebrate her 80th birthday.
During that conversation, Fuller dragged Facey out of the car and mercilessly put a bullet in his head — leaving him bloodied and motionless on the busy parkway.
Fuller took off in Facey’s car before eventually ditching it in Queens.
The beloved dad’s murder left his angry widow questioning a justice system that twice had spared Fuller hard time after felony arrests. “Why did they let this animal out to kill my husband, after he had already tried to kill someone?” said June Facey.
“Raymond didn’t deserve to die like this.”
Fuller was paroled in 2009 after serving the paltry five years for shooting David McDonald in Queens.
He was rearrested in March 2010 for allegedly dealing and possessing crack shortly after his parole, but prosecutors dropped the drug-sale charge and eventually let him plead guilty only to a pair of misdemeanors, court records show.
Instead of a sentence of up to nine years, Fuller served just a year and was back on the streets by May 2011.
Prosecutors said yesterday the evidence was thin in the drug case — and insisted that guaranteed jail time was better than risking an acquittal.
Fuller was still on parole Tuesday — and forbidden from driving a car — during his alleged rampage, which shattered two families.
“Raymond was a sweet, wonderful person,” his widow said. “He’s the last good man that God had made, and I got him.”
Fuller was eventually found with gunshot wounds to the leg and shoulder. In a desperate bid to create an alibi, he claimed a kidnapper had shot him.
Nassau cops are questioning a man who met with Fuller after the murders, and found two guns in his car, law-enforcement sources said.
It’s not clear whether Fuller’s wounds were self-inflicted or if his pal shot him at his request.
Investigators said Fuller confessed his crimes to the friend, who eventually left him in a van stolen from an NYPD cop in Jamaica.
The suspect was transported last night from Jamaica Hospital to Nassau County Police Headquarters in Mineola, where he faced a mass of angry officers before being taken inside.
“This suspect doesn’t deserve to be on the same planet as Artie Lopez, and unfortunately, the circumstances are reversed,” said Lopez’s supervisor, Lt. Adam Scheiner.
Earlier in the day, Lopez’s heartbroken colleagues gathered at his Babylon home to collect some of his belongings.
One crushed officer was seen somberly removing Lopez’s dress uniform, which Lopez had worn only Monday to the funeral of fellow Nassau Officer Joseph Olivieri, 43, who had been killed on duty the week before. The badge on that uniform still bore a black mourning band.
Lopez family friend Ozra Shaker visited his shattered mother in Queens yesterday.
“She was crying,” Shaker said. “She said, ‘What am I going to do?’ I said, ‘I’m sorry.’
“I hugged her and I cried, too, because I loved that boy so much. The mother is in shock. She was always proud of him.”
Additional reporting by Dan Prendergast, Larry Celona and Doug Auer