Fired postal worker threatens to ‘shoot somebody’ when he was denied benefits, feds say
A man who was fired by the U.S. Postal Service tried to apply for unemployment benefits, then threatened a shooting when he was denied, federal prosecutors said.
A federal jury found Quadri Garnes, 48, of Brooklyn, New York, guilty of transmission of threats to injure after a five-day trial, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York said in a Dec. 13 news release.
His federal defender didn’t immediately respond to McClatchy News’ request for comment on Dec. 16.
After Garnes lost his job as a mail carrier at the Homecrest post office in Brooklyn in May 2022, his application for unemployment benefits was rejected because he worked less than 60 days, according to prosecutors.
While on the job, Garnes had crashed his postal truck into two vehicles before his firing, prosecutors said.
A few months later, in September 2022, Garnes sought unemployment benefits a second time by calling the New York State Department of Labor, according to prosecutors.
While on the phone with Garnes, a state DOL employee informed him that he hadn’t worked long enough for the USPS to qualify for benefits, prosecutors said.
According to court documents, Garnes became frustrated and said during the 45-minute phone call: “I can’t get what I worked for” and “so I have to go to the Post Office and shoot the Post Office up, right?”
His threats to shoot and kill USPS employees extended to state DOL employees, prosecutors said.
“Does the city want me to kill five or six people because I can’t pay rent?... Somebody might get shot today coming out of Department of Labor,” Garnes said over the phone, according to court documents.
Garnes told the DOL employee he was speaking with that he was aware his phone call was being recorded, a criminal complaint says.
“If I was to do something like that at least when they start going through the records, they know why it was done,” Garnes said, according to the filing.
The DOL, New York State Police and U.S. postal inspectors immediately took safety measures to protect the post office where Garnes had worked, as well as the specific DOL office he threatened, prosecutors said.
The U.S. Postal Inspection Service told two employees at the post office to “immediately call 911” if they saw Garnes and that he shouldn’t be allowed inside, according to court documents.
The federal investigation of Garnes revealed he was convicted of first-degree rape in 1994 and convicted of fourth-degree criminal possession of a weapon in 2004, the criminal complaint says.
While speaking with the DOL employee on the phone, he said he “had collectively spent 18.5 years in jail and that he was not worried about returning to jail because, in sum and substance, he would not have ‘to worry about paying (his) rent or card bills,’” according to the criminal complaint.
Garnes is facing up to five years in federal prison, prosecutors said. A date for his sentencing wasn’t listed in court records.
This story was originally published December 16, 2024 at 10:17 AM with the headline "Fired postal worker threatens to ‘shoot somebody’ when he was denied benefits, feds say."
.jpg)