A wild shootout in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village this afternoon left a child sex assault suspect dead and two law enforcement officers injured. The man authorities were looking to take into custody was Charles Mozdir. He was featured on John Walsh’s new CNN show “The Hunt” just last Sunday.
“It’s a very, very shocking ending,” Walsh said to CNN’s Brooke Baldwin by phone this afternoon, “But it shows how much the public cares and how much they can help.”
Mozdir was wanted in California for abusing a 7-year-old boy. “He was on the run for almost two years,” Walsh says. “And this family was destroyed, terrified that he would come back and hurt them. They had the courage to come forward and file charges against him and now they don’t have to worry if this guy is coming back.”
Walsh explained that following the original airing of “The Hunt” on Sunday, July 20, tips started to come in that Mozdir was in New York City.
“The tip came that he was in lower Manhattan, possibly working at a restaurant. That didn’t pan out. We reran the episode [last] night, and that released another tip, a cyber tip.” That tip led two officers with the U.S. Marshals Service and an NYPD detective to a shop called the Smoking Culture in the West Village where Mozdir was working behind the counter. Mozdir shot at the officers, striking two of them. They returned fire, killing him. The officers are expected to make a full recovery.