Subway Shooter Goetz Plans to Leave New York

Subway vigilante Bernhard Goetz said today that he will move out of New York City after he is tried on gun possession charges stemming from his shooting of four teen-agers who asked him for $5.

Lawyers for one of the teen-agers shot by Goetz said they are drafting a letter to Gov. Mario M. Cuomo, asking him to have state Atty. Gen. Robert Abrams resubmit the case to a grand jury.

A Manhattan grand jury earlier declined to indict Goetz for attempted murder and charged him with the lesser offense of illegal weapons possession. His trial is to begin March 19.

“I plan to be out of New York in a couple of weeks,” Goetz said in an interview. “Right now New York has its hooks in me pretty good.”

Destination Not Told

He refused to say where he plans to go but said he is not afraid to be visible in the city, which he has called “sick from one end to another.”

“I’m too busy to give it much thought,” he said.

Goetz, 37, who bought a gun after he was mugged in 1982, shot the four teen-agers on a Manhattan subway train Dec. 22. He surrendered to New Hampshire police on New Year’s Eve.

Goetz said he did not leave the city after the 1982 mugging because, “if every person in New York left New York after the first mugging, the population here would be half.”

Videotape Released

Goetz’s videotaped confessions made to New Hampshire police at his surrender were released Wednesday after a pretrial hearing.

In one session, Goetz reportedly said that he calmly checked each of his wounded victims and when one appeared not to have been badly injured said, “You don’t look so bad. Here’s another,” and fired at the victim again.

Ron Kuby, a lawyer for victim Darryl Cabey, said that and other revelations on the tapes prompted him and other lawyers to draft a letter to Cuomo, asking the governor to resubmit evidence to a second grand jury.