The NYPD yesterday released a dramatic series of surveillance photos that show a killer about to gun down his unsuspecting target on a busy Midtown street.
Brandon Lincoln Woodard, 31, had just checked out of the swank 6 Columbus hotel near Columbus Circle when he was followed by the assassin on West 58th Street and killed near Seventh Avenue Monday afternoon.
The assassin escaped in a getaway car. Cops early this morning were questioning the couple who rented the car, The Post has learned, although investigators don't believe they were driving it — but they are looking at the possibility they may have loaned it to someone who then used it in the crime.
Meanwhile, the law student appeared nervous as he had what turned out to be his final breakfast, at the La Parisienne diner.
“He ate breakfast at the counter but he was always looking over his shoulder,” said cashier Dimitrios Drimalitis, 61. “He looked scared and afraid of something.”
1. A silver Lincoln MKX sedan pulls up along West 58th Street and parks in an open spot near Seventh Avenue. Wearing a black hooded sweatshirt, the hit man (circled) exits through the passenger door, looks around and paces back and forth next to the sedan. He's 20 minutes early and his victim, Brandon Woodward, 31, is still checking out of the swanky 6 Columbus hotel.
2. The killer pulls his sweat-shirt hood over his head. At about 1:15 p.m., Woodward walks east on the north side of West 58th Street and crosses Broadway. He checks his smartphone, as if looking for directions, and passes right next to his assassin, who is waiting for an opportunity to strike.
3. Woodward turns around and walks west. He glances over his shoulder at the hooded man but seems not to recognize the killer and keeps going. The assassin approaches from behind, pulls a gun and blasts Woodward at close range with a single 9mm shot to the head. The 31-year-old father crumples to the ground. The shooter enters the Lincoln sedan and is whisked away by his getaway driver.
Woodard returned to his hotel and then left at 1:15 p.m., possibly lured away by the killer and drawn into a trap, said Police Commissioner Ray Kelly.
“It’s certainly a distinct possibility,” Kelly said. “We are looking into that.”
Cops said Woodard was killed with a weapon that ballistics determined was also used in a 2009 shooting in which two men riddled a St. Albans, Queens, house with bullets. No one was hit.
“They never found out who did it’’ or why, said Eshe Warner, 24, whose late grandmother, Iris Warner, owned the home at the time.
Pics bare chilling anatomy of hit in Midtown
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Pics bare chilling anatomy of hit in Midtown
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Pics bare chilling anatomy of hit in Midtown
