By Betsy Scheinbart
The father of a 14-year-old boy accused of killing a Chinese food deliveryman in Springfield Gardens last year said Monday police coerced him into signing his son’s incriminating statement taken by a detective shortly after the murder.
With the help of four teenage friends, Osbert Savage’s son allegedly used a brick to bash the head of Jin Sheng Liu, 44, and kill him, the Queens district attorney said. The teens are charged with murdering Liu in front of an abandoned house at 130-35 176th St. and robbing him of $60 worth of Chinese food Sept. 1, 2000.
Liu, was the owner of the Golden Wok restaurant on Linden Boulevard in St. Albans. He was a fairly recent immigrant from China. He and his family, a wife and two teenage kids, were living in the restaurant at the time of the murder. His family stayed there even after Liu was killed and the store was closed.
In the statement, taken by Detective Edward Hendrickson of the 113th Precinct, the teen admitted he and his friends planned to rob the deliveryman but said they did not intend to kill him. The teen also admitted to hitting the deliveryman with a brick, but was unsure of where he hit him.
“I thought I smashed him on the shoulder, but I might have hit his head,” the teen’s statement read. His friends had allegedly thrown a sheet over the man’s head, so he said it was hard to tell where he was hitting him, according to the statement.
But his father told the court he does not recall his son admitting such an act in the statement but had said instead that he dropped the brick.
Savage, of Springfield Gardens, took the stand Monday in State Supreme Court as a defense witness at a preliminary hearing. Hendrickson testified that he wrote the teenager’s statement after he was arrested Sept. 5, 2000.
“I was forced to sign it — I was rushed to sign it,” Savage said of his son’s statement, which he and his wife had to sign along with his son because he was only 14.
Henrickson had left the courtroom by the time Savage testified.
The young defendant, now 15, appeared in court Monday wearing a beige suit and multicolored tie. Still a baby-faced, slender young man, he was led into the courtroom in handcuffs by officers. He looked straight ahead during most of the hearing, but also turned around several times to look at family members sitting in the court room.
Hendrickson testified that after the defendant was apprehended by police, the 14-year-old told his side of the story to Hendrickson, the detective’s partner and the teen’s parents.
Hendrickson then had the boy repeat his story, so he could write it down. Next, Hendrickson said, he read the statement to the teen and his parents, but Savage denied that.
Savage said he asked to read the statement before signing it, but Hendrickson would not allow it, saying he was pressed for time because he had to work on other cases.
The boy is being tried in adult court for murder in the second degree, but faces a lighter sentence than his co-defendants because of his age. He could be sentenced to nine years to life in jail if convicted, while his friends face 25 years to life if found guilty.
The four other defendants, Darryl Tyson, Jamel Murphy and James Stone of Springfield Gardens and Stacy Royster of Rosedale, are all charged with murder in the second degree. Tyson, Murphy, and Royster were 17 at the time of the killing and are now 18. Stone was 16 and is now 17.
Tyson also appeared in court Monday because he dictated his statement to Hendrickson as well. Other detectives took the statements of the other three defendants, who will appear at their own hearings at a later date.
Wearing a plain, white T-shirt, Tyson looked older and larger than his co-defendant.
Hendrickson read Tyson’s statement to the court in which the teen said he was watching TV with his girlfriend — co-defendant Royster — when the other defendants showed up and joined him in a game of football.
According to Tyson’s statement, the 14-year-old boy said he wanted Chinese food but did not have any money. The teens hatched a plan to order the food, have it delivered to an abandoned house on a secluded cul de sac and then scare the deliveryman away so they could eat for free, according to the statement.
Tyson said in his statement Royster made the call from her cell phone and met the deliveryman, Liu, near Tyson’s home in a middle-class neighborhood of Springfield Gardens.
According to Tyson’s statement, he and at least one of the other boys had bricks, which they planned to use only if provoked. After jumping out from his hiding spot, Tyson said he dropped his brick and walked away from Liu and toward his girlfriend.
He said one of the boys threw a white sheet over Liu’s head and then the 14-year-old scooped up the brick and hit the man’s head, according to the statement.
“I had no idea the man was going to get hurt. We were just going to rob him of the food,” Tyson’s statement read.
Tyson and his co-defendant are due back in court July 18.
After facing eviction from their cockroach-infested backroom at the Golden Wok restaurant. Liu’s family finally got a rent-subsidized apartment in March, six months after the murder.
Reach reporter Betsy Scheinbart by e-mail at Timesledgr@aol.com or call 229-0300, Ext. 138.
