QUEENSBRIDGE HOUSES RESIDENT SENTENCED FOR KILLING RIVAL IN PLAYGROUND DISPUTE

Queens District Attorney Richard A. Brown announced today that a resident of Queensbridge Houses in Long Island City who convicted of killing a rival in a playground shooting inside the Queensbridge Development has been sentenced up to 15 years for the crime.

District Attorney Brown identified the defendant as Trenell Darby, 21, of the Queensbridge Houses at 40-01 12 Street, Long Island City. He was sentenced to 5-15 years in prison for manslaughter in the second degree and criminal possession of a weapon in the second degree. He will serve this time connectively with two other sentences, one for Queens County drug conviction from 1996 and the other for a seven year sentence drug trafficking conviction from North Carolina in 1994.

According to trial testimony, on September 4, 1993, at approximately 1:00 a.m., the defendant and two others, Howard Wall, who was previously sentenced to 7½ to 15 years in prison and Noray Price, who was previously sentenced to 8 to 16 years in prison, were en gaged in a drug related altercation with Edgar Wine at a playground in the Queensbridge Houses. During the altercation, it was testified, Price shot the victim in the thigh and Darby shot him in the back of the head, killing him instantly.

Darby was arrested in 1996, and returned from North Carolina where he had been serving the drug trafficking sentence. He was convicted of manslaughter in the second degree after a two week jury trial before Supreme Court Justice Robert J. McDonald.

Assistant District Attorney Mark Osnowitiz of the Queens District Attorney's Homicide Trials Bureau, under the supervision of Daniel A. Saunders, Bureau Chief, was in charge of the prosecution.