A good reason to use your phone when you are at a concert? Good alibi. That's the lesson we're taking from the story of Shane Rhooms. It starts like this: On September 6 an assailant got off six shots at cops in Flatbush before running away. Those same officers later picked Rhooms mugshot out of a photo lineup and insisted he was their guy and locked him up in Riker's. Only problem? He kept insisting he was nowhere near Flatbush at the time, in fact he said he was at a reggae concert at Webster Hall.
The police eventually restarted their investigation after Rhooms passed a lie-detector test and let him out of jail (after three weeks!). Meanwhile, Rhooms lawyer went and dug up video footage of his client entering Webster Hall and cellphone records that proved he was in Manhattan at the time of the shooting (he had gotten separated from a friend at the concert and called to try and find him). Yesterday a judge dropped all charges against the innocent man.
Not that Rhooms' good news is sitting well in Police headquarters. "Detectives were and remain confident of information that led them to the suspect in the first place, of the subsequent police identifications and they remain skeptical of the purported alibi," NYPD spokesman Paul Browne told the News. We honestly aren't sure how else they could be convinced.
