REUTERS/Layli Foroudi
(New York, NY) — Charles Foehner, a 67-year-old retired doorman from Queens, was cuffed this week and carted off to serve four years behind bars, in part for shooting and killing a man in self defense back in 2023.
Foehner was walking towards his Kew Gardens parking garage around 2 a.m. on May 31st in 2023, when he was approached by 32-year-old Cody Gonzalez. Gonzalez demanded money and cigarettes. Foehner told prosecutors at the time that he thought the would be mugger had a knife in his hand. So when Gonzalez charged toward him, Foehner pulled out a .38-caliber revolver and fired five shots towards the career criminal killing him. It was later determined that the knife Fohner believed he saw that night was a pen.
The Queens District Attorney’s Office declined to charge Foehner for the shooting, citing justified self-defense, but they did decide to prosecute the senior for having illegal guns. Police searched Foehner’s home in the hours after the incident and found 25 unlicensed firearms, including handguns and rifles. He was later charged with 26 counts of criminal possession of a weapon. He ended up pleading guilty to second-degree criminal possession of a weapon. As part of a plea deal he was forced to serve four years in prison.
Many New Yorkers saw Foehner as hero at the time for fighting back. They called on prosecutors to drop all the gun charges, but they did not. His attorney, Thomas Kenniff, argued that Foehner had been placed in an impossible position by New York’s “draconian” gun laws. Even Cody Gonzalez’s family spoke out, saying that Foehner had the right to defend himself on that night back in 2023.
But Foehner began his sentence this past week.
Foehner sits in a prison cell as 2025 stats show that New Yorkers who commit crimes, and are released without bail were re-arrested for any crime at a rate of approximately 20% to 26% within two years. In early 2025, NYPD officials highlighted a “staggering” 146.5% spike in felony assaults committed by repeat offenders over a multi-year period, blaming a “broken system” for continued releases.
