Justin Murrell, Facebook
A 15-year-old gang member with a lengthy rap sheet will be charged with attempted murder and assault for using a stolen car to drag a cop along several blocks in Brooklyn, leaving him fighting for his life in the hospital, the NYPD said Monday.
The felony charges would make the boy — identified by police sources as Justin Murrell — eligible to be prosecuted as an adult.
But “that will be up to the DA’s office,” NYPD Chief of Detectives Robert Boyce told reporters during an afternoon briefing at the Central Park Precinct station house.
A spokesman for acting Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez declined to comment.
Murrell — whose Facebook page is littered with references to gangs, guns and sex — is a member of Brooklyn’s Eight Trey Crips gang and has a record of 11 arrests, including for three robberies in 2015, a burglary last year and grand larceny both this year and last, police sources said.
In all of the cases, he was prosecuted as a juvenile in family court, sources said.
“Enough is enough. He should be charged as an adult. He probably should have been charged a couple of arrests before,” one cop said.
“How many chances do you want to give somebody?”
Murrell is suspected of critically injuring Officer Dalsh Veve, 35, who found the teen behind the wheel of a stolen black Honda Civic parked in front of a fire hydrant following a report of shots fired in East Flatbush late Saturday night.
Veve, a married father of a 2-year-old girl, was apparently holding onto the car’s door and got dragged for about three blocks “at a high rate of speed” before he “fell from the vehicle,” Boyce said.
Patrick Lynch, the president of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, accused the justice system of failing to deal with Murrell before it was too late.
“You can be 15 years old and you’re a threat . . . He should’ve went to court and should pay for the crimes he did in the past,” Lynch fumed. “Now, unfortunately, we have to visit a hero police officer in the hospital.”
Lynch made the remarks outside Kings County Hospital, where sources said Veve, the married father of a 2-year-old girl, was in a medically induced coma with a severe brain injury.
NYPD Commissioner James O’Neill met with the cop’s wife Monday morning.
“She’s a strong person. She just asked that all New York City keep their thoughts and prayers for him,” O’Neill said.
Veve fired two bullets during the mayhem, striking Murell in the face, sources have said.
The teen is being treated at Brookdale Hospital, where he was breathing with the help of a mechanical ventilator on Sunday and was scheduled for surgery Monday, sources said.
Additional reporting by Shari Logan