Watts, Susan “They were hoping I dropped the case or died . . . (that) it would just go away,” Reid, 55, told the Daily News.
Seventeen years after he was shot by an off-duty cop, ex-squeegee man Antoine Reid’s lawsuit against the city remains stalled like a car outside the Holland Tunnel.
Several delays have hindered Reid’s 1998 case against the city, the NYPD and Michael Meyer, the former officer who opened fire on him in a confrontation in the South Bronx.
“They were hoping I dropped the case or died . . . (that) it would just go away,” Reid, 55, told the Daily News.
But Reid insists he isn’t going anywhere — even though he’s now a shell of the man who plied his controversial trade throughout the 1990s.
Schwartz, Michael Police Officer Michael Meyer (L.), on trial in the 1998 shooting of squeegee man Antoine Reid, leaving the courtroom in Bronx Supreme Court as his trial went into recess. He is accompanied by his attorney Murray Richman.
Reid was an unemployed factory worker with a drug problem and a long rap sheet when he approached Meyer’s car at his usual corner — 138th St. near the Major Deegan Expressway — on June 14, 1998.
Meyer was on his way home from a Yankee game with his girlfriend and her 6-year-old son when Reid started soaping up his windshield. Meyer, then 28, shot the unarmed squeegee man in the chest at point-blank range.
“I thought I was going to die,” Reid recalled.
“I was looking up in the sky thinking this is how death feels,” he added. “Even now I want to cry just talking about it.”
Schwartz, Michael Antoine Reid, squeegee man shot by off-duty cop Michael Meyer in 1998, filed a $100M lawsuit against the city.
Meyer was acquitted of attempted murder at a bench trial in the Bronx.
But the former Marine — who was the subject of six prior excessive force complaints — was dismissed from the NYPD in 2000 after a departmental trial found he’d “overreacted” to Reid and had shot him “without required justification.”
The shooting marked a rare moment when a squeegee man — seen as the scourge of the 1980s and early 1990s — gained the sympathy of the city.
While his $100 million lawsuit was inching along in the court system, Reid’s body was breaking down.
He now limps around with the aid of a cane. He has painful back problems. And he has trouble going to the bathroom because parts of his intestines were removed.
Gash marks on his torso reveal the trajectory of the bullet that entered and exited his body — and forced doctors to remove his spleen.
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“I relive it every day because you look on TV, people getting beat up and shot — I have flashbacks,” Reid told The News.
Murray Richman, who defended Meyer with co-counsel Steven Kartagener and Anthony Ricco, said Reid was “overwhelmingly intimidating” in the incident and was just as aggressive on the witness stand.
“The public sentiment was pro-squeegee man and subsequent public sentiment was this is so outrageous, that it was clear (Meyer) was acting in self-defense,” Richman said.
Watts, Susan Antoine Reid gives his sister a hug.
Spencer, Robert Antoine Reid insists he isn’t going anywhere — even though he’s now a shell of the man who plied his controversial trade throughout the 1990s.
But Reid’s lawyer Robert Brown said the case in Bronx Supreme Court is not a “he-said, she-said.”
“There are several independent witnesses that all say the same thing — Antoine had his hands up and was unarmed,” Brown said.
Brown said that although the NYPD determined Meyer was trying to make an arrest, city lawyers argue it was “not within the scope of his employment.”
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He hopes a favorable recent appellate court decision on this question will cause them “to reevaluate the case.”
Brown is not aware of any settlement offers through the years. The city deemed the matter a “no pay” case, he said.
A spokesman from the Law Department declined to comment.
“I’m going to do everything in my power to get this case in front of a jury in the Bronx as fast as I possibly can so Antoine can have his day in court,” Reid’s lawyer said.