Opinion
July 14, 1986
Appeal from the Supreme Court, Queens County (Linakis, J., Lerner, J.).
Judgment reversed, on the law and the facts, so much of the defendant's motion as was for the suppression of his statements to the police granted, and a new trial ordered.
The record before us shows clearly that prior to the defendant's first admission that the subject gun belonged to him, the police had their guns drawn, had announced that they were going to "lock up everybody for the gun", and were approaching the suspects with their handcuffs out. Accordingly, the defendant was, for all intents and purposes, under arrest before the initial admission was uttered (see, Dunaway v New York, 442 U.S. 200). As we intimated in our previous decision, such arrest was not based on probable cause (People v Perez, supra). Inasmuch as it is obvious that the defendant's admission of ownership, as well as the second admission which followed immediately thereafter, derived from this illegal arrest, his admissions should have been suppressed as the so-called "fruit of the poisonous tree" and should not have been used against him at trial (see, Wong Sun v United States, 371 U.S. 471; People v Rogers, 52 N.Y.2d 527, cert denied 454 U.S. 898, reh denied 459 U.S. 898). Lazer, J.P., Gibbons, Weinstein and Niehoff, JJ., concur.