A former U.S. Postal Service mail carrier with a violent past threatened to go postal and shoot several people if he didn’t get unemployment benefits, federal prosecutors allege.
Quadri Garnes, a registered sex offender from Brooklyn who served time for a 1994 attempted rape conviction, faces federal charges after he exploded over the phone Sept. 29 at two state Labor Department workers, threatening to shoot up a post office and kill several people.
Garnes, 46, used to work at the Homecrest Station post office in Brooklyn, according to a federal complaint, though it’s not clear how his job ended there. He called the Labor Department looking for benefits associated with that job, according to federal prosecutors.
“I can’t get what I worked for… so I have to go to the Post Office and shoot up the Post Office, right?” he said during the phone call, according to a criminal compliant, later asking, “Does the city want me to kill five or six people because I can’t pay the rent?”
He also threatened to shoot people outside the downtown Brooklyn office of the Department of Labor, prosecutors allege.
“Somebody might get shot today coming out of the Department of Labor,” he said, according to prosecutors.