During a Friday court appearance, 65-year-old Charles Foehner saw his bail doubled to $50,000 before Just Jerry Iannece in Queens Criminal Court. The judge lashed out at the retired doorman for having an unlicensed firearm.
“The defendant was on the street with a loaded, unlicensed gun,” he charged. “There are too many shootings in this city! The court is quite concerned with what we see.”
Foehner was confronted by an aggressive robber on Wednesday in the Kew Gardens neighborhood of Queens. The retiree was out for a walk when he encountered 32-year-old Cody Gonzalez. The suspect allegedly began approaching Foehner from about 40 feet away demanding money and cigarettes.
He was brandishing what the intended victim thought was a knife but later turned out to be a pen. Gonzalez can clearly be seen on surveillance video staggering back and forth in an apparent attempt to taunt the older man.
Foehner backed away and gave several verbal warnings, but his attacker kept advancing. When Gonzalez allegedly lunged at the walker from roughly eight feet away, Foehner opened fire. The suspect staggered into the street where he collapsed and died.
Police reported that Gonzalez had at least 15 arrests going back to 2004 along with a history of mental illness.
The would-be victim called the police and waited for them to arrive. By all accounts he cooperated with the authorities and then turned himself in on Thursday. Foehner was initially charged with second-degree criminal possession of a weapon and criminal possession of a firearm. He was held on $25,000 bail.
Just a day later his situation changed dramatically. He was then arraigned on 26 counts of criminal possession of a weapon, though he was not charged in the fatal shooting of Gonzalez. His bail was also doubled to $50,000.
This came after police carried out a search warrant for Foehner’s Queens apartment and found more than two dozen weapons.
According to Assistant District Attorney Joseph Randazzo, investigators located “approximately 26 firearms, including pistols, shotguns, rifles, an AK-47, two body armor vests and multiple rounds of ammunition in the residence.
Authorities reported that Foehner has a license for five rifles but not for the handguns. The weapon used in what is believed to be self-defense Wednesday was also unlicensed.
Foehner told law enforcement that he acquired the handgun in a bar one night in the 1990s. He said he was carrying the weapon to protect himself from the city’s violent criminals.
“Last night I was carrying a firearm because of the way the city has been for the last three years,” he explained to the police. “I read the crime stats and I see so much crime. I had the pistol.”
As for the number of weapons in his apartment, Foehner said collecting firearms became a hobby.
Judge Iannece ignored the pleas of Foehner’s lawyer, Margaret Lin, to let her client out of jail without bail. She asserted that he lives “steps away” from the courthouse, is a deli worker without a criminal history, and is not a flight risk.”
She also noted that he called the police immediately after the robbery in which he was the victim.
Her pleas, however, fell on deaf ears. Instead, Iannece pointed to the cache of weapons found in the apartment and lectured that New York City has “way too many shootings.”
The New York Post reported that Foehner faces up to 25 years in prison on the primary charge, criminal possession of a firearm in the first degree.
It is doubtless that Second Amendment advocacy groups are reviewing the details of the case and will likely come to the retiree’s aid. New York’s overbearing gun laws are what directly led to last year’s landmark Bruen decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, and this appears to be a case of piling on charges to make a point.
