Dog owner involved in Central Park dog attack killed in shootout with New Jersey police

As the Post has revealed, one of the dog owners involved in last year’s headline-grabbing fatal stabbing of a dog in Central Park was killed in a shootout with police in New Jersey in June.

Karl Gregory, 46, was shot dead shortly after midnight on June 13 at the Royal Albert’s Palace Hotel in the Fords section of Woodbridge Township, the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office said.

The shooting, which injured two police officers, occurred just as a hearing was scheduled to take place in the mysterious stabbing case of a dog in Manhattan that attracted national attention last summer.

According to police sources, Gregory was already the victim at the time of his death, which was sparked by a fight between his three miniature pit bulls and a 15-year-old German Shepherd mix named Eli, who was fatally stabbed.

Immediately after the incident, the owner of the condemned dog, Brian Cornwell, told police and reporters that Gregory’s dogs attacked Eli as he was walking through the park after dinner with his wife and their other pet, a small Chihuahua, on a Saturday in June 2023.

Cornwell claimed that during the fight between the dogs, Gregory stabbed Eli with a switchblade and that Cornwell sprayed Gregory and his dogs with pepper spray.

Police initially printed wanted posters with Gregory’s photo and asked for his identification so they could question him about the stabbing of the dog in the park near the corner of East 106th Street and Fifth Avenue.

Other dog owners in Central Park told The Post at the time that Gregory’s dogs were a known nuisance in the northeast quadrant of the park.

A few days later, police told reporters that the stabbing was an accident and that Gregory was trying to cut the dogs’ tangled leashes when he missed and accidentally stabbed Eli.

Months later, in February, investigators charged Cornwell with four misdemeanors, including third-degree assault and second-degree menacing. Prosecutors claimed he was the real dog stabber, court records show.

When Gregory died, he was wanted by the New York Police Department for another crime – a retaliatory shooting in East Harlem on June 7 that left an innocent bystander brain dead, police sources say.

Officials in Edison, New Jersey, were alerted to Gregory’s presence in the Garden State by an automatic license plate reader on the night of June 12. Edison officials then notified the NYPD, according to the Attorney General’s Office.

Officers from the Edison and Woodbridge police departments and the New York Police Department entered the hotel on King Georges Post Road and found Gregory’s empty car outside, the attorney general’s office said.

Officers entered the hotel to interview witnesses when the elevator doors opened at 12:21 a.m. and Gregory emerged “carrying several bags in his hand,” which he then dropped to the floor while reaching into a black backpack, the attorney general’s office said.

Gunfire was exchanged between officers Drew Krupinski and Justin Nerney of Gregory and Woodbridge and NYPD Detective Matthew Mauro, according to a police department press release. The release did not say who fired first.

Gregory was hit and died at the scene, according to the Attorney General’s Office, which found a pistol nearby.

Officer Nerney and Det. Mauro were also shot and taken to a New Brunswick hospital for treatment, where they have since been released, the attorney general said.

The New Jersey Office of Public Integrity and Accountability is investigating Gregory’s death.

The prosecution in the stabbing dog case relied on Gregory as a witness, and the Manhattan district attorney’s office moved to dismiss the charges after his death, said Cornwell’s attorney, F. William Salo.

According to Salo, prosecutors alleged that Cornwell started the fight in the park that day, carried a knife and stabbed both Gregory’s dog and his own dog, Eli.

Cornwell is also accused of firing pepper spray at Gregory during the fight and waving the knife as Gregory ran away, Salo said.

But Cornwell maintained his innocence and insisted to the Washington Post that Gregory was the dog killer.

Cornwell added that he was not holding a knife during the altercation, but rather a keychain bicycle tool.

Before Gregory’s death, his attorney had filed a motion to dismiss the case.

During a scheduled hearing on that motion on June 13 — just hours after Gregory was killed in the shooting — Salo said prosecutors had requested that the case, which has since been sealed, be dismissed.

Cornwell said he believes the proceedings against him are retaliation for filing a complaint last August with the NYPD’s internal watchdog agency – the Civilian Complaint Review Board – alleging that the investigating detective did not properly investigate the case.

“It took four days for investigators to even speak to me. Then I was told that my investigation was not a priority,” Cornwell claimed in an interview.

He is currently considering filing a lawsuit against the New York Police Department and the District Attorney’s Office.

Meanwhile, Gregory’s friend Marlon Delgado is having great difficulty understanding the violent death of his old basketball teammate.

Delgado had known Gregory since 1996 when they played together at Central Connecticut State University.

Delgado told the Post he will remember Gregory as a “provider and protector” of his young daughter, Kali.

“Our conversations were about these kinds of issues. We talked about gentrification and gun violence in the neighborhood and what needed to be done and policy and community action,” Delgado recalls.

“So none of this makes sense.”