A Manhattan teenager on July 6 was sentenced in Queens Supreme Court to eight years in prison in connection with a string of purse snatchings that targeted older women in March 2022. One of the incidents led to the stabbing of two good Samaritans, a father and son who raced from their Elmhurst pizzeria to help one of the victims.
Supreme Gooding, 19, of West 41st Street in Manhattan, pleaded guilty on June 21 to robbery in the first degree for one incident and admitted to his involvement in a second. Gooding’s co-defendant and brother-in-law, Robert Whack, 32, of St. John’s Place in Brooklyn, awaits trial on charges of attempted murder in the second degree; assault in the first and second degrees; robbery in the first and second degrees; criminal possession of a weapon in the fourth degree; grand larceny in the fourth degree; criminal possession of stolen property in the fifth degree; and criminal possession of a controlled substance in the seventh degree.
According to the charges, on the afternoon of March 16, 2022, Whack grabbed the purse and knocked the cane from the hands of a 75-year-old woman entering her apartment building on 64th Street in Woodside. Video surveillance footage showed Whack and Gooding running down the street with the victim’s purse immediately after the robbery.
Then, on the evening of March 26, 2022, Whack snatched the purse of a 61-year-old woman as she walked near Baxter Avenue and Judge Street in Elmhurst. Gooding knocked her to the ground and the woman called out for help. Louie Suljovic, 38, a military veteran and owner of Louie’s Pizzeria on Baxter Avenue, and his 68-year-old father, Charlie, intervened when they heard the woman’s cries for help from in front of the shop. The defendants, who had the victim’s purse, attacked the good Samaritans. According to the charges, Gooding punched the younger man while Whack stabbed both men and the woman. Whack and Gooding then fled.
The three victims were taken across the street to Elmhurst Hospital Center. As a result of the attack, Charlie Suljovic sustained nine stab wounds to his chest and back and suffered from a collapsed lung. His son Louie also sustained a collapsed lung and a stab wound to his back, as well as other injuries. The 61-year-old woman sustained a single stab wound to her back.
“We will not tolerate our neighbors being targeted by ruthless predators,” Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz said. “The defendant will now have to pay for what he did to these women.”
Queens Supreme Court Justice Kenneth Holder sentenced Gooding to eight years in prison.
