A Brooklyn man faced justice Wednesday more than seven years after allegedly delivering a punch to a bicyclist that put the victim in a fatal coma.
Gary Anderson, 34, of Franklin Avenue was booked on Feb. 5 on first- and second-degree manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide for the death of Domingo Tapia, 44, of Ralph Avenue.
Tapia died in March 2024 after being in a coma for nearly six years following the attack that occurred early on the morning of June 8, 2017, near 1560 Fulton St., off Albany Avenue, in Bedford-Stuyvesan.
Law enforcement sources said Tapia, then 38, was riding his bicycle along Fulton Street when the suspect, later identified as Johnson, punched him in the face. Tapia subsequently fell to the ground and struck his head, the blow leading to severe trauma and a fractured skull, according to NBC New York.
The suspect fled the scene by the time officers from the 81st Precinct and paramedics arrived. EMS rushed the victim to Kings County Hospital in critical condition; he was placed in a medically-induced coma, but never regained consciousness.
Tapia’s family later transferred him to Richmond County Medical Center where he remained unconscious and on life support until his death last March.
Anderson, meanwhile, was arrested two weeks after the attack, on June 22, 2017, and booked on two counts of second-degree assault. The elevated manslaughter charges came on Feb. 5, 2025, after the Medical Examiner’s office declared Tapia’s death as a homicide, police sources said.
Detectives led Anderson out of the 81st Precinct stationhouse in handcuffs on Wednesday afternoon en route to arraignment on the manslaughter charges. He kept silent and turned away from the cameras of waiting journalists as he was loaded into a waiting police vehicle bound for Kings County Criminal Court.
With reporting by Lloyd Mitchell
