Win Rozario

Win Rozario was a 19 year old Bangladeshi American teenager from Ozone Park, Queens, New York, whose family had immigrated to the United States from Bangladesh roughly a decade before his death. He was not a public figure in life. He became known to the wider public only after he was killed, when his case turned into one of the most closely watched police shooting controversies in New York City in recent years.

On March 27, 2024, Rozario called 911 himself while in the middle of a mental health crisis, seeking help. Two New York Police Department officers, later identified as Salvatore Alongi and Matthew Cianfrocco, responded to his family's apartment. According to accounts given by his family and supported by police body worn camera footage that was later made public, his mother had taken a pair of scissors away from him before officers used a Taser on him while he stood unarmed in the kitchen. Officers then shot him, striking him multiple times, in an encounter that lasted under two minutes and happened in front of his mother and younger brother. He died at the scene or shortly after.

The shooting mattered because it crystallized long running concerns about how police in New York and across the United States respond to people experiencing psychiatric crises, especially in immigrant and minority communities where families often call 911 expecting help rather than a fatal confrontation. Rozario's death drew immediate grief from Queens' Bangladeshi community and prompted public statements of support for the family from elected officials, including the city's Public Advocate and several City Council members, as well as from mental health and South Asian community organizations.

The New York State Attorney General's Office of Special Investigation opened a mandatory inquiry, as required whenever police kill an unarmed civilian in the state, and released bodycam footage from the encounter. In December 2025, the Attorney General's office announced it would not bring criminal charges against either officer. Separately, the NYPD's own oversight process moved to bring departmental misconduct charges against both Alongi and Cianfrocco, but in May 2026 Alongi retired from the department after eighteen years of service before ever facing a disciplinary trial, a fact Rozario's family said they were not told about for months and which effectively closed off that avenue of accountability for him.

Rozario's family, led publicly by his mother and his brother, has continued to press the city for answers and accountability well over two years after his death, and has filed a civil lawsuit against the NYPD over the shooting. As of this writing, no criminal charges have been filed in connection with his death, and the disciplinary case against the second officer, Cianfrocco, remains unresolved. Win Rozario is remembered by his family and by advocates as a teenager who asked for help and was killed by the people sent to provide it.