An 18-year-old man allegedly manufactured “ghost guns” from an East Harlem day care run by his mother – where cops seized 3D printed weapons and firearm parts, NYPD officials said Wednesday.
Karon Jamal Coley and two other suspects, both minors, were arrested Tuesday following the raid on East 117th Street near Madison Avenue, Rebecca Weiner, the NYPD’s Deputy Commissioner for Intelligence and Counterterrorism, said at a press conference.
It came less than two weeks after a 1-year-old boy was exposed to fentanyl and died at a Bronx day-care center that authorities said housed a covert drug-dealing operation.
“This is a heartbreaking scenario of thinking that you’re dropping your child off to a place of safe haven, just to find out that it was a dangerous environment where someone was making a gun inside,” Mayor Eric Adams said Wednesday.
Investigators uncovered two completed 3D-printed weapons and one nearly-finished assault pistol, as well as a 3D printer, 3D printing tools and plastic filament in the home where Coley’s mom runs a licensed childcare facility, Weiner said.
A single 3D-printed lower receiver – a central part of assault weapons – was also discovered, she said.
And cops also discovered an “obviously maltreated and neglected dog” – which police sources described as a tiny female Pitbull – inside a locked room, according to Weiner.
Investigators began to probe the secret operation after learning “a group of individuals, including some minors … were purchasing ghost gun parts from online retailers,” as well as the materials “required to print 3D firearm components,” Weiner told reporters.
Coley was charged with criminal possession of a loaded firearm, manufacturing a machine gun, manufacturing a rapid fire modification device, manufacturing a dangerous instrument, four counts of criminal possession of a weapon and acting in a manner injurious to a child, cops said.
The ages of the minors, and their relationships to Coley, if any, were not immediately known. Police did not release their names because they are underage.
“These folks are preying on our children,” Adams said at the press conference announcing the sting. “We have an 18-year-old in his room with a 3D printer. He’s not making little robotic toys, he’s making guns. That should be scary to everyone. That is extremely frightening.”
The number of so-called “privately made firearms” recovered in the Big Apple has “increased significantly” over the last three years.
Such weapons are untraceable — as they don’t have serial numbers — and can be fashioned with a 3-D printer or assembled piecemeal with shipped parts.
A total of 263 ghost guns were recovered in New York City in 2021, 436 were taken off the streets in 2022 and 290 so far this year, police officials said.
The East Harlem day care was last inspected in February, when three violations were found “related to documentation around feeding and sleeping schedules and preferences from the family as well as verification from doctors that children don’t didn’t have any infectious diseases,” said Christina Chang, the Acting Executive Deputy Commissioner of Mental Hygiene for the city health department.
“They were cited those issues and they took corrective action and verified that the paperwork was done,” she added.
The bust came the same day authorities in Mexico cuffed Felix Herrera, 38, described as “the main player” in the alleged fentanyl-riddled Bronx business, law enforcement sources said.
Herrera had been on the lam since 1-year-old Nicholas Feliz Dominici died and three other children were sickened at the Divino Niño Daycare in Kingsbridge on Sept. 15.
Herrera’s wife, 36-year-old Grei Mendez De Ventura – the owner of the daycare – and Carlisto Acevedo Brito, 41, Herrera’s cousin, were arrested the day after Nicholas’ death and charged with murder, assault and child endangerment.
This week, a third alleged accomplice, Renny Antonio Parra Parades, 38, was hit with federal drug charges for his role in the alleged drug operation.
