By Zach Patberg
Authorities claim Daniel Carpio, 23, an Army Private on leave from his division in Fort Hood, Texas, had just left a relative's house where he had been drinking when he met up with friends outside the building at 141-60 85th Rd. around 11 p.m. on Dec. 28 and fired his pistol three or four times skyward. One of the stray bullets tore through 28-year-old Selina Akther's right eye as she looked out from her window five flights above, police said.Carpio, of 139-54 86th Ave. in Briarwood, was charged with manslaughter and criminal possession of a weapon, both in the second degree, Queens District Attorney Richard Brown said last Thursday. He faces up to 30 years in prison if convicted.”As a soldier trained in the safety and handling of weapons both in and off the battlefield, the defendant should have known better than to aimlessly fire a gun in a crowded residential area,” Brown said.When Akther's husband, Golam Maola, heard the round of fire, he – like most of the neighbors within earshot – thought it was probably firecrackers, the kind frequently let off by children in the streets.He had been in the bathroom talking on the phone to a relative in Bangladesh. When he returned minutes later to the living room where they both had been watching half-hour sitcoms on the Indian channel, all the lights were off. Figuring his wife had gone to bed, he sat on the couch in the dark and continued his phone conversation.Only then did he notice some liquid on the floor by the window.”I touched it and saw it was blood. Then I saw my wife laying down next to it,” Maola, 38, said the next day as he leaned against the entryway to the living room, weary-eyed from hours of grieving. “I shook her and asked her what happened, I said, 'Wake up, talk to me.' There was no response.”The bullet, police said, had penetrated her eye and exited out the back of her head. She was pronounced dead at the scene.Selina Parvan, Akther's best friend who lives across the hall, recalled hearing Maola burst out of his apartment and pound on her door screaming hysterically, “My wife is dead, my wife is dead.””His whole body was blood,” she said.Akther's death, which came three days before her friends and family were to hold a surprise party for her 29th birthday, marked the sixth homicide this year in the 107th Precinct, a rise from zero murders in 2004.”It used to feel very homey and safe around here,” said Mohammed Rahma, who has lived in the same building for 20 years. “Now I don't know. I might have to think about moving away.”Carpio himself has reportedly said he joined the Army to get away from a gang environment. In 2000, he was attacked on Hillside Avenue by members of the Central American MS-13 gang, the New York Post reported.At the time of last week's shooting, Wilma Marciso said her husband, Richard, was putting up a curtain rod above the window in their apartment below where Akther and Maola lived with their 10-year-old daughter and 6-year-old son.Both he and another witness claim they saw a group of four people standing on 85th Road laughing right after the shots were fired.”I thought they were firecrackers,” Wilma Marciso said. “We didn't know until a half hour later. That's when we heard the screaming.”Reach reporter Zach Patberg by e-mail at news@timesledger.com or by phone at 718-229-0300, Ext. 155.
