A reputed Brooklyn gangbanger who dragged an NYPD cop with a stolen car five years ago was arrested again this week — for allegedly leading cops on a high-speed chase in yet another stolen vehicle.
Repeat offender Justin Murrell was just 15 in June 2017 when he dragged then-Officer Dalsh Veve for several blocks to avoid a traffic stop in East Flatbush, leaving the cop brain-damaged and unable to speak.
Murrell’s case sparked further outrage in January 2019 when he escaped a maximum sentence of 10 years — with his soft sentence instead seeing him released on parole just 14 months later, in March 2020.
Just over a year after his release and weeks before his parole was due to end, he was busted again for crashing into several parked cars in East New York after a high-speed chase in a stolen car.
He was in court in Brooklyn on Monday for that ongoing May 2021 case when he was rearrested for an almost identical crime from February this year.
Now 20 and living in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Murrell was accused of driving a stolen car linked to a string of car thefts at LaGuardia and Kennedy airports as well as a “high-speed fleeing incident,” sources said.
Despite his track record and parole violations, he has already been released on his own recognizance ahead of a court date scheduled for May 24, court records show.
“THIS. IS. INSANITY,” New York’s Police Benevolent Association (PBA) tweeted, listing Murrell’s record and how this month he was “arrested & RELEASED AGAIN!”
“While the attempted cop-killer is free to terrorize the city, our hero brother, his courageous wife and their young daughter persevere through every day. They deserve better. All New Yorkers deserve better,” the PBA said.
“Every moment he spends free is not only an insult to our hero brother and his family — it is a real danger for New Yorkers,” added PBA president Patrick Lynch.
The NYPD also acknowledged the outrage as it said that “today, as always, we remember the continued sacrifice of Det. Veve & his family.”
“On 6/3/17, Det. Dalsh Veve was catastrophically injured while stopping a stolen vehicle,” the force said of the cop, whose promotion to detective came after his near-fatal run-in with the reported gangbanger.
“His assailant, who has been arrested twice in the last 10 months, including 2 days ago, remains free.”
Murrell — a reputed member of the Eight Trey Crips and G Stone Crips gangs — was behind the wheel of a stolen Honda Civic when Veve pulled him over for a routine check one June 2017 night.
He floored it when the nine-year NYPD vet approached the car, dragging Veve for three blocks as he clung desperately to the car.
At Murrell’s trial, Veve’s wife, Esther, had called for the maximum sentence of 10 years, telling the court, “I’m speaking now because my husband is not able to speak for himself.”
But despite being prosecuted as an adult, Murrell was sentenced as a juvenile to just 1-1/3 to four years in detention, which Lynch at the time said “spit on every shield on every chest in this city.”