By Courtney Dentch
A Woodside family Sunday mourned their 18-year-old son who was killed while making a delivery from the family’s South Jamaica Chinese restaurant as police searched for additional suspects.
Huang Chen, 18, of Woodside, was found dead in Brookville Park Feb. 14 after he was stabbed and beaten while making a food delivery from his family’s Chinese restaurant on Guy R. Brewer Boulevard in South Jamaica.
Chen was mourned at a private memorial service Sunday morning at a Chinatown funeral home. He was laid to rest in Kensico Cemetery in Westchester. Chen’s mother was so grief-stricken she did not attend her son’s funeral but was at the wake Saturday, according to published reports.
As Chen’s family remembered him, restaurant patrons around the city were asked to honor the slain delivery man by picking up their food themselves. City Councilman John Liu (D-Flushing) asked the city at a news conference Friday to hold a one-day moratorium on food deliveries Sunday in Chen’s memory.
“What we are asking is a one-day moratorium on Chinese food deliveries to observe the tragedy of Huang Chen,” Liu said. “We ask that people go to the restaurant, say hello to all these hard working people who earn their living preparing, serving and delivering food and take your own order home
Two 16-year-old boys were arrested in Chen’s murder, but the case was still under investigation, a spokeswoman for Queens District Attorney Richard Brown said. Another one or two people may have been involved, Liu said at a rally last week outside the restaurant.
Charles Bryant of 245-39 147th Dr. in Rosedale and Nayquan Miller of 168-24 127th Ave. in Rochdale Village were arrested Feb. 14 and charged with murder, robbery, possession of a weapon and tampering with evidence.
The pair were held without bail at their arraignment in State Supreme Court in Kew Gardens, and they face 25 years to life in prison if convicted.
The incident mirrors other murders in southeast Queens over the past five years. In 2000 five teenagers beat the owner of a local Chinese restaurant with a brick and robbed him after ordering food and having it delivered to an abandoned house. All five teens were later convicted.
In 1999 two teenage boys in Hollis killed a deliveryman from another Chinese restaurant with a baseball bat after he had brought them their food.
In Chen’s case, he was asked about 10 p.m. on Feb. 13 to deliver food to Building 8 in Rochdale Village, a large cooperative housing complex in South Jamaica. He was reported missing at 1:45 a.m. the next morning and was found dead in Brookville Park about 9 a.m., police said.
Miller lived in the Rochdale Village apartment where the food was delivered. Brown said that although Chen pleaded with the boys to take his money and let him leave, they allegedly beat him with a bat and repeatedly stabbed him in the upper torso so he would not be able to identify them, according to the district attorney.
Miller and Bryant then allegedly disposed of evidence of the crime, including bloody clothing, and took Chen’s body to nearby Brookville Park, where they dumped the corpse in a pond, the DA said.
Reach reporter Courtney Dentch by e-mail at news@timesledger.com, or by phone at 718-229-0300, Ext. 138.
