DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Courtesy of the New York Daily News
https://www.nydailynews.com
A vendetta killer who shot down an innocent man outside a Queens school while pursuing the man he believed had killed his brother was sentenced to 45 years to life in prison Thursday.
Yusef Bey, 22, will now spend the bulk of his life behind bars for fatally shooting 35-year-old Terence Burt in the chest and wounding his intended target and another man outside Intermediate School 8 in Jamaica just before 8 p.m. on Feb. 24, 2004, prosecutors said.
Bey was still reeling from the September 2003 death of his brother Shahada Bey when he approached the school at 108-28 167th St. and began firing a stream of bullets, police and prosecutors said.
At the time of the shooting, the schoolyard was filled with students playing pick-up basketball, prosecutors said.
After shooting Burt, Bey pistol-whipped and shot Anthony Houston, who had been arrested but was never convicted of Shahada Bey’s murder, police and prosecutors said. Houston was shot in the hip. Bey also shot Dermoth Cross in the calf, police said.
“You were so filled with rage because somebody took the life of your brother that you felt justified…taking the law into your own hands,” Queens Supreme Court Justice Michael Aloise said before sentencing Bey for murder, attempted murder and criminal possession of a weapon. “You don’t understand the consequences of what you did.”
Bey, a lanky young man who grinned throughout the sentencing, apologized to Burt’s widow but claimed he was innocent.
“He was young, he wasn’t thinking at the time,” said defense lawyer Andrew Worgan.
Angela McLaughlin-Burt asked the judge for the harshest penalty during the sentencing hearing. The 45-year-old mother also included a message from her 7-year-old son, Terence Jr. – who asked that Bey be locked up “till [Terence] is an old man,” she said.
She demanded that Bey listen to her statement, telling him, “I’ve watched you for two and a half years. You’ve taken this as a mere joke or a smack on the wrist. You’ve smiled throughout this time.”
Bey was on the lam for a year and a half before he was caught for the murder, according to court documents.
“This defendant decided he would be the judge, the jury and the executioner,” said prosecutor John Kosinski, “[He] is one man who does not care about the rest of society.”
