Press Release
MANHATTAN MAN SENTENCED TO EIGHT YEARS FOR ROBBERY
Acted With Brother-in-Law to Steal Purses
Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz announced that Supreme Gooding was sentenced today to eight years in prison in connection with purse snatchings targeting older women in March 2022. One of the incidents led to the stabbing of two Good Samaritans who intervened to help a victim.
District Attorney Katz said: “We will not tolerate our neighbors being targeted by ruthless predators. The defendant will now have to pay for what he did to these women.”
Gooding, 19, of West 41st Street in Manhattan, pleaded guilty on June 21 to robbery in the first degree for one incident and admitted his involvement in a second. He was sentenced today by Queens Supreme Court Justice Kenneth Holder to eight years in prison.
Gooding’s co-defendant and brother-in-law, Robert Whack, 32, of St. John’s Place in Brooklyn, awaits trial on charges of attempted murder in the second degree, assault in the first and second degrees; robbery in the first and second degrees; criminal possession of a weapon in the fourth degree; grand larceny in the fourth degree; criminal possession of stolen property in the fifth degree; and criminal possession of a controlled substance in the seventh degree.
According to the charges:
o On March 16, 2022, at approximately 5:35 p.m., Whack grabbed the purse and knocked the cane from the hands of a 75-year-old woman entering her apartment building on 64th Street in Woodside. Video surveillance footage showed Whack and Gooding running down the street with the victim’s purse immediately after the robbery.
o On March 26, 2022, at approximately 8:45 p.m., Whack snatched the purse of a 61-year-old woman as she walked near Baxter Avenue and Judge Street in Elmhurst. Gooding knocked her to the ground and the woman called out for help. A 68-year-old pizzeria owner and his 38-year-old son ran to assist the victim. The defendants, who had the victim’s purse, attacked the Good Samaritans. Gooding punched the younger man while Whack stabbed both men and the woman. Whack and Gooding then fled.
o The three victims were taken to a Queens hospital. The pizzeria owner sustained a stab wound to the back, a collapsed lung and a fractured rib. His son also sustained life-threatening injuries, including multiple stab wounds to the chest and back and a collapsed lung. The 61-year-old woman sustained a single stab wound to the back.
Assistant District Attorney George Kanellopoulos, Supervisor in the District Attorney’s Special Victims Bureau, prosecuted the case under the supervision of Assistant District Attorneys Eric Rosenbaum, Bureau Chief, Debra Lynn Pomodore, Senior Deputy Bureau Chief, and Brian Hughes, Deputy Bureau Chief, and under the overall supervision of Executive Assistant District Attorney for Special Prosecutions Joyce Smith.