He beat an off-duty cop within an inch of his life, and now a Jamaica man will be looking at some serious jail time.
On Wednesday, Nov. 2, jurors convicted Hayden Holder, 32, of brutally assaulting the officer outside an Ozone Park restaurant nearly three years ago after getting into a verbal argument with the victim inside a Queens nightclub.
According to trial testimony, Holder — a resident of 102nd Avenue in Jamaica — got into a verbal dispute with Sergeant Mohamed Deen outside Club Maracas on Jamaica Avenue in Richmond Hill at 4 a.m. on the morning of Nov. 17, 2013.
Thirty-five minutes later, prosecutors said, Holder encountered Deen again outside the St. John’s Express Bar & Restaurant at 118-14 Liberty Ave. in Ozone Park. Holder followed Deen back to his car, where the sergeant’s wife was waiting, then attacked him.
Law enforcement sources said Holder punched the victim and knocked him to the ground, then repeatedly kicked him in the head, knocking the sergeant unconscious. The defendant then grabbed Deen’s head and slammed it against the pavement.
Officers from the 106th Precinct and EMS units responded to the incident. Deen was rushed to a local hospital; he suffered a traumatic brain injury, multiple facial fractures and a knee injury. For months after the attack, Queens District Attorney Richard A. Brown noted, Deen experienced headaches and double vision.
“A jury weighed all the evidence and convicted [Holder] in the brutal beating of an off-duty police officer who was so severely injured he could not resume work for approximately four months,” Brown said in a statement on Thursday, Nov. 3.
Holder was arrested shortly after the assault and initially charged with attempted murder; those charges were later reduced.
After a two-week jury trial, Holder was convicted of first-degree assault and faces up to 25 years behind bars. He is scheduled to be sentenced on Nov. 16.
