Daniel Enriquez, the Goldman Sachs executive tragically gunned down by a stranger while riding a Q train, was laid to rest Tuesday in a somber ceremony in Williamsburg, where friends and family remembered a life well lived that was tragically cut short in an act of random violence.
About 200 people, including some honchos at the Wall Street investment bank, came to Transfiguration Roman Catholic Church on Marcy Avenue the morning of May 31 to bid their final farewell to Enriquez, a 48-year-old Park Slope resident who was riding a Q train into Manhattan on May 22 to go to brunch with friends when he was fatally shot by an assailant while the subway was crossing the Manhattan Bridge.
Enriquez’s family members said that the random killing has had a harrowing impact.
“Our family is destroyed,” said Enriquez’s niece Michelle. “We are devastated.”
The perp, identified by police as 25-year-old Andrew Abdullah of Prospect Lefferts Gardens, was described by witnesses as pacing back-and-forth in the subway car before discharging his weapon at Enriquez, who had rarely taken the train since the start of the pandemic but was on the Q to avoid Uber surge pricing.
The assailant managed to evade capture when the train pulled into the Canal Street station in Manhattan, and was on the lam for two days until being arrested in Manhattan on May 24. Abdullah hoped to turn himself in directly to Mayor Eric Adams, with facilitation by Rolls-Royce driving pastor and former Borough President candidate Lamor Miller-Whitehead, but his lawyers and the preacher say he was ambushed by law enforcement at the Legal Aid Society’s Manhattan office, and subsequently taken to the 5th Precinct.
Abdullah was arraigned on second-degree murder charges and is being held without bail. The suspect had a lengthy rap sheet, including a prison sentence after being swept up in a 2017 gang takedown. He was paroled in 2019, but had several pending cases on assault and weapons charges before allegedly opening fire on Enriquez. Most recently, in April, he was released without bail on auto theft charges.
Enriquez’s niece lambasted the state’s controversial 2019 bail reform law — which eliminated judges’ ability to hold defendants on cash bail for most offenses — at her uncle’s funeral.
“It is not okay that he was arrested so many times and we need to see change in New York City,” Michelle Enriquez said. “Bail reform is wrecking this city.”
Prior to Tuesday’s mass, Enriquez was remembered as a “pacifist” who deplored violence and conflict at a wake Sunday in Ozone Park, Queens. Enriquez is set to be buried at St. John Catholic Cemetery in Middle Village, Queens.
