Press Release

Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz today announced that Terrence Harry, 40, has been sentenced to 20 years in prison after being convicted at trial of attempted murder. The defendant stabbed two men inside a residential garage in South Ozone Park in September 2017.

 District Attorney Katz said, “The defendant’s unprovoked knife attack could have ended the lives of the two victims. Both men sustained very serious injuries – including one victim surviving a severed artery and collapsed lung. The Court has ordered the defendant to prison with a sentence that hopefully provides a measure of justice to his victims.”

Harry, of 119^th Avenue in Jamaica, was found guilty in November 2021 of attempted murder in the second degree following a two-week-long bench trial before Queens Supreme Court Justice Michelle Johnson. Today, Justice Johnson sentenced Harry to 20 years in prison, to be followed by five years’ post release supervision.

 District Attorney Katz said, according to trial testimony, on September 23, 2017, at approximately 12:50 p.m., defendant Harry was inside the residential garage with the homeowner and another man. The defendant, without provocation, began yelling and without provocation pulled out a knife and stabbed the 39-year-old man in the neck. Witnessing this attack, the homeowner tried to intervene and grabbed the defendant. That’s when Harry turned on the 46-year-old homeowner, who tried to move away but was stabbed once in the back. The defendant fled the scene immediately after the attack.

 The homeowner’s friend underwent emergency surgery to repair a severed branch of his carotid artery and stabilize his collapsing trachea. He also sustained a collapsed lung in the knife attack. The homeowner required multiple staples to close a puncture wound to his back.

Assistant District Attorney Matthew Luongo, of the DA’s Career Criminal Major Crimes Bureau, prosecuted the case under the supervision of Assistant District Attorneys Shawn Clark, Bureau Chief, and Michael Whitney, Deputy Bureau Chief, and under the overall supervision of Executive Assistant District Attorney of the Major Crimes Division Daniel A. Saunders.