Bloody End To Parks Workers’ Dispute In Flu.
A former Parks Department worker from Ozone Park will be spending the next quarter-century behind bars for fatally stabbing a man during a fight in Flushing in September 2012, prosecutors announced.
Robert Swann, 53, of 103rd Avenue was convicted in early April of this year on first-degree manslaughter for killing Brooklyn’s Ezra Black, 31, during a dispute at the Al Oerter Recreational Center on Sept. 4, 2012.
Queens Supreme Court Justice Ira Margulis, who presided over the jury trial, ordered Swann on Monday, Apr. 28, to serve 25 years in state prison, according to Queens District Attorney Richard A. Brown.
“[Swann] has now been held accountable for his senseless actions and will spend considerable time behind bars for resorting to violence and taking an innocent life,” Brown said in a statement Monday. “Hopefully, the victim’s family can find some degree of solace in this sentence.”
Reportedly, the slaying occurred at about 3:20 p.m. on Sept. 4, 2012, near a shed at the Al Oerter Recreational Center, located at 131- 40 Fowler Ave., after Swann and Black-both of whom were Parks Department employees-got into a verbal argument.
The exchange turned violent, authorities said, when Swann stabbed Black in the front torso. He would later tell detectives he fled from the scene with the knife and later discarded the weapon and his clothing in a Flushing Meadows- Corona Park field.
Officers from the 109th Precinct and EMS units rushed to the scene. Paramedics brought Black to New York Hospital Queens, where he was pronounced dead on arrival.
During a search, police tracked down Swann near the Unisphere at Flushing Meadows Park. He was booked the following day on seconddegree murder charges.
The 109th Precinct Detective Squad conducted the investigation.
The case was prosecuted by Senior Assistant District Attorney Denise Tirino of the District Attorney’s Homicide Trials Bureau, under the supervision of Assistant District Attorneys Brad A. Leventhal, bureau chief, and Jack Warsawsky, deputy chief.
