By Chris Fuchs
After a two-week jury trial, Henry Vega, 34, of Flushing, was convicted Nov. 28 of four counts of first-degree criminal sale of a controlled substance, among other charges, said Richard A. Brown, the Queens district attorney.
State Supreme Court Justice Randall Eng, the presiding judge in the case, was expected to sentence Vega on Jan. 4. If convicted, Vega faces 25 years in prison for each of the four drug sales he made, the district attorney said. Vega is presently being held in prison awaiting trial on the two homicides, the district attorney said.
According to Brown, the police had established a ruse nightclub in Flushing back in January 1999 after learning that Vega had been peddling drugs in the neighborhood. Word spread in Flushing that the nightclub owners were looking to buy drugs, the district attorney said, as well as engaging in other illegal activities.
A few months later, Vega began visiting the club, the district attorney said, and on four separate occasions, he sold the undercover officers more than one pound of cocaine, which has a street value of more than $100,000, the district attorney said.
It was during this investigation that the police acquired evidence that Vega may have been responsible for the death of a New York City police officer, who was murdered outside his Flushing house 13 years ago, the district attorney said.
On July 7, 1987, the officer, George Sheu, stepped outside his house in the evening and saw Vega allegedly breaking into a car, the district attorney said. When the theft was foiled, Vega allegedly shot the officer in front of his home, the district attorney said.
More than nine years after that shooting, another Flushing man, Joseph Hill, was found murdered in Kissena Park in the Aurburndale section of Flushing, the district attorney said. The police said the murder, which happened on Nov. 4, 1996, was motivated by robbery.
Vega has also been charged in the slaying of Hill.
“The evidence of the defendant's guilt in the narcotics case was overwhelming and I am pleased by the verdict,” Brown, the district attorney, said. “We will soon shortly proceed to try the homicide cases.”
