Wednesday, April 13, 2005

D.A. BROWN: QUEENS YOUTH ARRAIGNED ON MURDER CHARGES IN STABBING DEATH OF MOTHER’S FIANCE; FACES UP TO 25 YEARS TO LIFE IN PRISON

Queens District Attorney Richard A. Brown announced today that a Queens youth has been arraigned on murder charges in the stabbing death of his mother’s fiancé in their Cambria Heights residence.

District Attorney Brown said, “The defendant has been charged with stabbing the victim with a knife causing his death.”

The District Attorney identified the defendant as Christopher Drayton, 16, of 118-27 228th Street, Cambria Heights, Queens who has been charged with Murder in the Second Degree and Criminal Possession of a Weapon in the Fourth Degree and faces up to 25 years to life in prison if convicted.

The defendant was arraigned in Queens Criminal Court earlier today before Judge Lenora Gerald who set bail of $450,000 and a return date of April 15, 2005.

District Attorney Brown said that a criminal complaint charges that on April 11, 2005 about 8:30 p.m. inside 118-25 228th Street in Cambria Heights the defendant intentionally and with depraved indifference to human life stabbed the victim, Darrell Paige, 41, with a knife causing his death.

Assistant District Attorney Neal J. Morse of the District Attorney’s Homicide Investigations Bureau is prosecuting the case under the supervision of Assistant District Attorneys Peter T. Reese, Bureau Chief, and Peter J. McCormack III, Deputy Bureau Chief, and Senior Assistant District Attorney Richard B. Schaeffer, and the overall supervision of Executive Assistant District Attorney for Major Crimes Charles A. Testagrossa and Deputy Executive Assistant District Attorney for Major Crimes Daniel A. Saunders.

It should be noted that criminal charges are merely an accusation and that a defendant is presumed innocent until proven guilty.