A fired Co-op City janitor who lost his legal battle to get reinstated made a list of people he thought wronged him and sought revenge – shooting his old boss to death and wounding two strangers yesterday, authorities said.
Paulino Valenzuela, 50, had accused the slain man, Audley Bent – along with other workers at the Bronx housing complex – of discriminating against him because he is Latino. He named Bent and several other co-workers in a federal wrongful-termination lawsuit he filed last year.
But it was Valenzuela, a native of the Dominican Republic, who was overcome with hatred when he learned a judge dismissed his case Friday.
He targeted Bent, 59, with the first shots – using a silencer, cops said.
Bent, a Jamaican native who moved to this country in 1973 and lived in Rosedale, Queens, died at the scene.
“We were told he was trying to run away and was shot in the back,” said Bent’s son, Kevin, 31. “We all depended on him.”
Valenzuela then stumbled onto his next victims, police said. Both are Co-op City maintenance employees – apparently unknown to Valenzuela.
Sander Palaj, 47, was shot in the neck. He was taken to Jacobi Hospital, where he was in critical condition.
“I’m just praying to God,” Palaj, a Bronx father of two, said to relatives before being placed in a medically induced coma.
Valenzuela also allegedly fired at Phil Zadrima, grazing his right arm.
“He pointed the gun at me and said, ‘Don’t move!’ ” Zadrima said. “I said, ‘What’s wrong with you?’ I started moving, and he just shot me.”
After the bloodbath, Valenzuela boarded a bus and turned himself in at the Bronx Criminal Court building.
“Arrest me. I just killed somebody,” he told Court Officer Robert Fernandez.
On Monday, he learned a judge had dismissed his case against RiverBay Corp., the company that runs Co-op City.
Valenzuela was remanded early today during his arraignment in Bronx Criminal Court. His next court date is Sept. 5.
Additional reporting by Murray Weiss, Erin Calabrese and Jennifer Fermino