A gay man was gunned down in Greenwich Village early yesterday morning by an armed bigot who hurled homophobic slurs at him — and claimed to be the Newtown, Conn. killer before the murder, police said today.
Marc Carson, 32, was walking with a pal on Sixth Avenue near West Eighth Street about midnight when they were approached by Elliot Morales, 33 and two other Hispanic males, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said.
One man snarled homophobic slurs at the men and asked them if they were “gay wrestlers,” Kelly said.
The men continued moving and made a right onto West Eighth Street.
One of the Hispanic men left and Morales and his buddy continued to follow the victim and another man.
Both the victim and another man with him were wearing tank tops, cutoff shorts and boots.
“Do you want to die here?” Morales asked the victim.
He pulled out a .38-caliber revolver and shot Carson once in the cheek.
“It was a quickie. He shot him and he went straight to the ground,” said a bouncer at a nearby club.
“Half his body was lying on the sidewalk and half was on the street.”
Carson died shortly after at Beth Israel Hospital.
“This is clearly a hate crime,” Kelly told reporters.
There have been 22 bias attacks in the city so far this year, up from 13 at this point last year, he added.
After wounding the victim, Morales ran east and then downtown. Police nabbed him shortly after on MacDougal and West Third streets.
When he saw the cop car, he tossed his revolver to the ground and surrendered.
Morales was charged with murder and criminal possession of a weapon after being questioned by police at the Sixth Precinct. Cops said Morales, who was in possession of a fake ID, was uncooperative and refused to identify himself and refused to be fingerprinted.
Morales appeared crazed and confessed to the shooting after he was nabbed, a police source said.
Twenty minutes before the slaying, the suspect had gotten into confrontation after urinating on the wall of a bar called Annisa, on Barrow and West Fourth streets.
When a bartender confronted him, the brute told him that if he called police, he would shoot him.
“Don’t you know I’m wanted? Do you know about the shooting in Sandy Hook?” he bizarrely told the bartender, according to Kelly. “I’m a wanted man.”
Cops said morales was arrested for attempted murder in 1998.
City Council Speaker Christine Quinn — who is running to be the New York’s first openly gay mayor — said she was horrified by the attack.
“There was a time in New York City when two people of the same gender could not walk the street arm-in-arm without fear of violence and harassment,” she said. “We refuse to go back to that time.”
Police are asking anyone with information about the murder to call the Crime Stoppers Hotline at 1-800-577-TIPS.