The ex-con charged with shooting NYPD cop Brian Moore tried to hide in plain sight in front of his Queens Village home after the attack, friends said Sunday.
“He was hanging out for an hour and a half, smoking cigarettes and talking like everything was normal,” said pal André Tucker, 26. “He said, ‘Yeah, I heard a cop got shot.’”
Tucker lives in the same walk-up building as suspect Demetrius Blackwell, who was busted there about 90 minutes after he allegedly opened fire on Moore and his partner, Erik Jansen. The two officers were attacked after confronting a suspicious Blackwell while on plainclothes patrol Saturday evening.
A woman in her 30s, who also lives in the home at 104-25 212th Place, said Blackwell, 35, “was standing outside with a group of us’’ minutes after the shooting.
“He acted like nothing happened,’’ she said.
The woman, who wouldn’t give her name, recalled the explosion of gunfire that took place at around 6:15 p.m. Saturday — and the mayhem that followed.
Both of Blackwell’s buddies said the suspect was among about 10 people chatting outside their home when cops first came by and ordered everyone inside.
After the police told them all to get off the street, “we went up to the second floor to film [what was happening] with our phones,” Tucker said. “[Blackwell] stayed on the first floor, in the kitchen.”
About a half-hour later, “we were looking out the windows, and the cops told us to come outside,” Tucker added. “They made us come out one by one, yelling, ‘Announce yourself as you come out!’
“Demetrius didn’t come out with us because he was on the first floor,’’ Tucker said. “He came out a little later, in handcuffs.”
The woman who wanted to remain anonymous said she was with Blackwell when the cops “came charging in.”
“I was in shock when they arrested him,” she said. “He didn’t say anything when they arrested him.”
A law-enforcement source said Blackwell later denied to investigators that he had shot Moore.
A man in his 40s who lives nearby described Blackwell as “no good.”
“I avoided him,” the neighbor said. “He had a look in his eye like a predator . . . I would cross the street when I saw him. I did not like him.”
Other neighbors said Blackwell is a cousin of former Giants football player Kory Blackwell, with one describing bad blood between the kin.
“I know Kory had a problem with Demetrius because he treated him like an ATM,” one neighbor said.
“It was all about what Kory could give him. Demetrius didn’t want to work for anything.”
A boy who answered the phone at Kory’s house said, “There’s nothing he wants to say,” and then hung up.
Additional reporting by Jamie Schram