Results tagged “keithphoenix”

Today's Post reveals for the first time that there was a third man in the SUV with the Keith Phoenix and Hakim Scott the night of the attack on the late Jose Sucuzhanay and his brother Romel last December in Bushwick. The paper says that the unnamed man did not participate in the attack and is now under police protection since he will testify against his friends. Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes has unsealed the indictments against the two men charged with second-degree murder, manslaughter and assault—all as hate crimes. Hynes said, "The acts which we charge this morning are no less despicable because the victims Jose and Romel Sucuzhañay were not gay.” The DA says that Romel was putting a jacket around his brother on the cold December night when they were spotted by the pair of Bronx men who then allegedly beat Jose with a bottle and a bat. Both Scott and Phoenix are expected to plead not guilty to the crimes that could land them 78 years to life in prison—the maximum sentence.

Keith Phoenix, who was charged with killing an Ecuadorian immigrant last December, has given an interview from Rikers Island to the Daily News. He told the paper, "I'm not a killer. I never expected anyone to die."

The second man arrested in the hate crime killing of an Ecuadorian immigrant is presenting a very different story of the fight that led to the death of Jose Sucuzhaynay. The accusations have been that the two murder suspects, Keith Phoenix and Hakim Scott, targeted the late Jose Sucuzhaynay and his brother because the pair of brothers appeared to be gay. Instead, Phoenix says that one of the Sucuzhaynays provoked the fight by kicking in the door of the car that Phoenix was driving. He says that as the fight escalated, Sucuzhaynay reached into his waistband for what Phoenix thought was a weapon, inciting the fatal beating.

Police Commissioner Ray Kelly released a chilling account of yesterday's police interrogation of Keith Phoenix, the second man arrested this week in the hate crime murder of an Ecuadorian immigrant in Bushwick. While his partner in crime Hakim Scott was reported to have been shaken up by the death of Jose Sucuzhanay when brought in, Phoenix expressed no such remorse. Instead he asked cops, "So I killed someone—that makes me a bad guy?...What's the big deal? The guy's dead."