The Queens man who fatally shot an ex-con trying to rob him near his home was hit Thursday with illegal weapons charges but dodged a homicide count.
Charles Foehner, 65, was charged with 25 counts of illegal weapons possession, police said. He’d used an unlicensed .38-caliber revolver to shoot his mugger, according to cops, but it was not immediately clear why he was hit with more than one count.
Foehner was headed back to his apartment in Kew Gardens after running to a local store to buy cigarettes when Cody Gonzalez confronted him around 2 a.m. Wednesday, police said.
As Foehner made his way up a driveway leading to his building on 82nd Ave. near Queens Blvd., Gonzalez, 32, approached him while waving a sharp object in his hand before demanding his cash and cigarettes. The sharp object turned out to be a pen.
Thinking Gonzalez’s pen was a knife, Foehner pulled out his revolver and fired it five times as the mugger continued to bear down on him, striking him in the chest, police said. The mugger was pronounced dead at the scene.
Foehner called 911 to report the incident. A nearby resident also called 911, police said.
When cops arrived, the gunman admitted to shooting the robber and said his revolver was in his pocket. He then handed the firearm over to responding officers.
Officials later searched Foehner’s home and removed at least one additional weapon — a long gun for which he had a license, the source added.
“He’s definitely a gun guy,” the source remarked.
Foehner, who has no criminal record, did not have a license for the .38-caliber gun he used to shoot the mugger.
“I’m still in the dark about all of this,” the shooter’s wife previously told the Us.Mistertruth. “I don’t want to comment right now.”
The gunman’s building’s superintendent said the tenant was just minding his own business in the moments before the shooting.
“I can tell you he didn’t want to do that,” John, the super, who viewed surveillance video of the shooting previously said.
“I can tell you he wasn’t looking for trouble. He was trying to go about his day.”
The mugger had been banging on the windows of private homes before encountering the shooter, a police source said.
The door to a building next door was smashed in, along with the intercom in a building across the street.
The mugger had multiple arrests on his record, including a weapon possession arrest on Feb. 9 and robbery, burglary and petty larceny arrests last year, according to police. He has also been accused of selling drugs and criminal mischief.
A woman who used to live near him in Glendale, said she had an order of protection out against him after her security cameras captured him stealing her mail.
Relatives said Gonzalez, who was raised by a single adoptive mother, struggled with psychiatric issues and refused to take the medications he was prescribed.
“He wasn’t a bad kid. He really wasn’t,” said Anthony Aguilar, a cousin of the slain mugger. “It’s ‘cause he stopped taking his damn pills. He was fine when he was taking his medication.”