A Man Died After Shooting a Firefighter During a Six-Hour Standoff With Police on Staten Island

A local leader of the Bloods gang was killed during a shootout with New York City police on Friday after a six-hour standoff on Staten Island, DNAInfo reports. By the time the dust settled, the man had shot a firefighter in the leg, detonated a smoke grenade in his home, and unleashed a barrage of bullets with an assault rifle, cops said.

Thirty-eight-year-old Garland Tyree first barricaded himself inside his home early Friday morning when a group of NYPD officers and US Marshals tried to arrest him on a federal warrant for violating the terms of his probation. After police entered the home, Tyree set off a smoke grenade, which drove them out.

When the New York Fire Department's Lieutenant James Hayes went inside to investigate the source of the smoke, Tyree fired at him, striking him twice. Hayes was transported to a local hospital and is currently in stable condition, Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro told reporters. This was the first shooting of an NYC firefighter in the line of duty in over two decades.

An hours-long standoff followed during which hostage negotiators tried and failed to lure out Tyree, who spoke on the phone to DNAInfo and also posted an eerie forecast of his own demise on Facebook. He eventually emerged in a bulletproof vest and unloaded dozens of rounds from an AK-47, shooting police cars and houses before cops returned fire and killed him.

Prior his death, Tyree had been arrested 18 times, and was suspected by the FBI to have risen to the rank of Godfather in the Bloods' local Nine Trey Gang.