A man who served time two decades ago for a sensational robbery spree that left a prep-school pal dead somehow managed to become a Correction Department firearms instructor — and now he’s being investigated for buying illegal assault weapons, The Post has learned.
How Jason Katanic got his job has become the focal point of a city Department of Investigation probe.
He “never should have been hired,” a source said.
He got the job in 1997 — about eight years after he was released from prison — but it’s unclear if Correction officials knew of his dark past, or if he made attempts to hide it from them.
“A background check turned up a sealed court record, but no details were available,” a spokesman said.
In 1988, Katanic — then 18 and a newly graduated Fordham Prep honor student — and four school chums made headlines after a hare-brained scheme to score $900 escalated into a wild crime spree and a deadly shootout with a cop.
Katanic and four others used a .22-caliber rifle to rob a Bronx bodega clerk of $140, then started shooting out car windows in the neighborhood.
They then pulled up to a car occupied by off-duty cop David Erosa, and Katanic’s pal James Cooney pointed the rifle at Erosa, demanded his wallet, and then fired two bullets at the cop’s car.
Erosa drew his revolver and fired five shots, hitting Cooney once in the face.
The preppies sped off and dumped Cooney’s body in Ferry Point Park.
They vowed to tell no one what had happened, but one of them squealed to a girlfriend, and she called cops.
Katanic pleaded guilty to robbery and attempted robbery, and served six months.
In the new weapons probe, someone tipped off authorities that Katanic was buying illegal weapons, sources said. He has since been transferred from the city firing range in The Bronx to Correction’s Queens academy, a spokesman said.
“[Katanic] has been working for years,” a man who identified himself as an uncle told The Post. “He has a perfect record. He was a teenager then.”
Additional reporting by Reuven Blau & Dan Mangan