Thursday, May 19, 2005

D.A. BROWN: QUEENS YOUTH SENTENCED TO 51 YEARS TO LIFE IN PRISON FOR MURDER IN VICIOUS KILLING OF CHINESE RESTAURANT DELIVERYMAN WHO WAS ROBBED AND FATALLY BLUDGEONED AND STABBED

Queens District Attorney Richard A. Brown announced today that a Queens youth has been sentenced to 51 and 1/3 years to life in prison for murder and other charges for the brutal slaying in February 2004 of a young Chinese food deliveryman who was robbed, beaten with a bat and a hammer and stabbed and whose lifeless body was dumped in a pond.

District Attorney Brown said, “The crime was callous and vicious and the punishment imposed by the Court of 51 and 1/3 years to life in prison is more than warranted. The victim, 18-year-old Huang Chen, was his family’s hope and pride and his death has left them shattered by grief. I hope that they find solace in the knowledge that justice has been done.”

The District Attorney identified the defendant as Charles Bryant, 17, of 245-39 147th Drive in Rosedale, Queens. He was convicted on March 16, 2005 of Murder in the Second Degree, Robbery in the First Degree and Tampering With Physical Evidence by a jury after a three week trial before Queens Supreme Court Justice Robert C. Hanophy who earlier today imposed sentence of 51 and 1/3 years to life in prison.

The District Attorney said that according to the trial testimony sometime after 10 p.m. on Friday, February 13, 2004 at 168-24 127th Street in Rochdale Village, a housing development in South Jamaica, Queens, the defendant, and others placed a food order for a delivery to an apartment at 168-24 127th Street.

The defendant -- and two alleged accomplices –- attacked the victim, Huang Chen, 18, by beating him with a bat and a hammer and stabbing him in the upper torso with a knife during a robbery inside the residence.

After the fatal attack, the defendant disposed of physical evidence of the crime including blood-stained clothing and dumped the victim’s body in a pond in Brookville Park a few miles away.

One of the alleged accomplices, Defendant Nayquan Miller, 16, of 168-24 127th Avenue in Jamaica, Queens is being held without bail on murder charges pending trial.

The case is being prosecuted by Assistant District Attorney Brad A. Leventhal, Deputy Chief, of the District Attorney’s Career Criminal Major Crime Bureau under the supervision of Assistant District Attorney James W. Evangelou, Bureau Chief, with the assistance of Assistant District Attorney Rosemary Chao of the District Attorney’s Kew Gardens I Trial Bureau under the supervision of Assistant District Attorneys Robert J. Masters, Bureau Chief, Therese M. Lendino and Robin D. Leopold, Deputy Bureau Chiefs, and the overall supervision of Executive Assistant District Attorney for Trials James C. Quinn and Deputy Executive Assistant District Attorney for Trials John H. Larsen.