Gunfire Killed One, Paralyzed Another
An ex-fugitive from Jamaica featured on the television program America’s Most Wanted has been sentenced to 50 years to life in prison for the murder and attempted murder of two local men in May 2002.
The defendant was identified by Queens District Attorney Richard A. Brown as Danny Williams, 34, of Jamaica, who was convicted in January of second-degree murder, second-degree attempted murder and first-degree assault following a jury trial before Queens Supreme Court Justice Gregory L. Lasak.
The judge imposed last Wednesday, Feb. 29, the indeterminate sentence of 50 years to life in prison. Williams was additionally sentenced to 1 1/3 to four years in prison for a probation violation.
“[The] sentence is a measure of justice for the victims of this defendant. Violence such as this will not be tolerated on the streets of Queens County,” Brown said. “[Williams] fled the jurisdiction and was able to delay justice-but ultimately he was captured, with the help of America’s Most Wanted, and will now begin serving a lengthy prison sentence.”
According to trial testimony, Williams, armed with a shotgun, and a co-defendant-Reginald Artis, who was 21 at the time and armed with a handgun-approached Roshawn Tate, 22, and a 21-year-old man just after midnight on May 28, 2002, in front of a location on 148th Street in Jamaica. The defendants began firing their weapons in the direction of the two victims, both of whom were hit discharges from the shotgun.
Williams and Artis had been robbed earlier in the day and they believed that Tate and the other man, while not the robbers, somehow had been involved. Both defendants then fled the scene.
Tate died at the scene as a result of being hit several times in the back as he ran for his life and the other man suffered multiple injuries to his torso and legs, including nerve damage to his legs that has resulted in him being permanently disabled.
Artis was arrested on Oct. 10, 2003, and held without bail. On Apr. 11, 2006, he pleaded guilty to second degree criminal possession of a weapon and was sentenced on Jan. 7, 2008, to nine years in state prison.
Williams was arrested on July 19, 2010, in Jackson, N.J., by the NYPD Fugitive Task Force and local police following two appearances on Amer- ica’s Most Wanted. He and Artis had been indicted by a Queens County grand jury on July 22, 2004.
Assistant District Attorney John W. Kosinski, chief of the District Attorney’s Vehicular Homicide Unit, prosecuted the case under the supervision of Assistant District Attorneys Brad A. Leventhal, chief of the District Attorney’s Homicide Trials Bureau, and Jack Warsawsky, deputy bureau chief, and the overall supervision of Executive Assistant District Attorney for Major Crimes Charles A. Testagrossa and Deputy Executive Assistant District Attorney for Major Crimes Daniel A. Saunders.
