A day after NBC10's cameras captured the end of a road-rage incident in which a man says an off-duty Philadelphia Police officer threatened him with a gun and called him a racial slur, a second man came forward with a similar story.
Now, the officer is on desk duty as police investigate.
The second man, who asked that NBC10 not reveal his identity, says he had a run-in about five months ago with a man believed to be the same off-duty officer who confronted Ahmed Khalil in traffic about 4:30 p.m. Tuesday.
In the more recent incident, Khalil said he was returning to the Northeast Philadelphia car dealership where he works around 4:30 p.m. Tuesday and was trying to merge with slow-moving traffic on Roosevelt Boulevard, just past City Avenue, when his encounter with the driver of a pickup truck escalated to road rage.
"He pulled his gun on me, cut me off and almost made me crash three to four times," Khalil said. "He pulled his window down and started cursing at me, telling me, 'You sand n****r! Go back to your country!'"
Khalil said he was even more shocked by who the armed driver claimed to be.
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"He said he was a cop right before he pulled out his gun, and he had his uniform on," Khalil said.
Within hours of NBC10's exclusive report on the road-rage incident -- our cameras were rolling when the pickup truck cut Khalil off one final time at the tail end of the encounter -- a second man came forward saying he also had a tense run-in with the same off-duty officer.
The man, who asked that NBC10 not identify him, provided video of the incident, in which another man -- driving what appears to be the same pickup truck in NBC10's video of Tuesday's incident -- shouts at him through the window of his car.
He said the pickup was tailgating him on southbound I-95 near the I-676 ramp when it struck his car and tried to flee. He followed, he said, until the driver of the pickup eventually pulled over and got out of his truck.
That's when the incident escalated -- with the man's camera rolling.
State Police confirmed that they responded to that incident, and that the pickup truck driver was indeed at fault. No citations were issued, and the man's car was not badly damaged.
The pickup truck in question is marked with a punisher decal with an American flag, a thin blue line, a Philadelphia Police sticker and a Fraternal Order of Police license plate.
Khalil reported Tuesday's incident to police and then spoke with Internal Affairs.
"There was no point in what he did whatsoever," Khalil said. "Nobody deserves anything like that."
Philadelphia Police removed the officer in question from street duty as they investigate the accusations.
"It's a very serious allegation right now, Internal Affairs is investigating," Philadelphia Police Commissioner Richard Ross said Wednesday morning. "The officer in question has actually been removed from street duties right now."
Ross said the department expects officers to act professionally whether on duty or not. [[394251371, C]]
"Clearly, officers have a responsibility to conduct themselves in a professional way, even off duty, and so we're looking into this case to see whether there's any merits to it," said Ross.
