A Connecticut man was sentenced on Monday for fatally shooting a man and injuring another during a traffic dispute in Kew Gardens more than six years ago.
George Cupi, 54, of Shelton, CT, was convicted on Jan. 18 of second-degree murder, second-degree attempted murder and second-degree criminal possession of a weapon. On Feb. 5, he was sentenced to 50 years to life in prison, according to Queens District Attorney Richard A. Brown.
According to trial testimony, at around 8 p.m. on July 14, 2011, Cupi was sitting in a double-parked white van on Austin Street in Kew Gardens. Jovanny Adames, 31, who was driving with his wife on Austin Street, approached the van and honked the horn several times.
Whent he van didn’t move, Adames got out of the car and approached Cupi and the two men proceeded to get into an argument. Jovanny’s brother Roberto Adames, 25, heard the commotion, walked over to the men and joined in the argument, which continued until Cupi drove away in the van.
Minutes later, Cupi returned to the scene with a .38-caliber revolver and began to shoot at Jovanny and Roberto, who were sitting in a nearby park that is located by the street where the three men had argued. Roberto was shot three times in the chest and died of his injuries. A bullet hit Jovanny in the face and lodged into his brain, but survived the injury.
Cupi fled the scene and was later arrested when an anonymous letter was sent to police in Connecticut stating that Cupi had committed a murder in Kew Gardens.
“This was a senseless shooting over a petty traffic dispute,” Brown said in a statement on Feb. 6. “The defendant had driven away after arguing with two brothers about being double parked on a residential street here in Queens. The defendant — enraged and seeking vengeance — returned to the scene, pulled out a gun and shot both men. One man died and the other was severely injured and still has a bullet lodged in his head. The sentence imposed by the court, under the circumstances, was more than warranted.”
