TEEN MURDER SUSPECT CALLED ‘NICE,’ ‘OUTGOING’
Charges against 3 defendants will go to grand jury Thursday
TOWN OF ULSTER, N.Y. >> At least 20 young friends and supporters of Kingston High School football player Maurice Stansberry Jr. filed out of Ulster Town Court on Tuesday after Stansberry and two co-defendants, including his father, pleaded “not guilty” to all charges in connection with a fatal shooting on Sawkill Road.
Stansberry Jr., 17, Kevin Gardener, also 17, and Maurice Stansberry, 38, each has been charged with second-degree murder and murder intention in the Saturday, Dec. 1, shooting death of Mark Lancaster, 39. The elder Stansberry also faces a charge of criminal possession of a firearm/loaded firearm.
All three suspects live in
Kingston, as did the victim.
In court on Tuesday, the younger Stansberry and Gardener waived their preliminary hearings. The elder Stansberry’s hearing was scheduled for 9 a.m. Friday.
Separately, all three defendants’ cases are to be presented to an Ulster County grand jury at 1 p.m. Thursday.
At the end of Tuesday’s proceeding, Ulster Town Justice Marsha Weiss ordered all three defendants returned to the Ulster County Jail without bail.
Kingston High School seniors Charles Kennedy, 18, Trayvon Landerway, 17, and Tyleaf McGriff, 18, spoke about the younger Stansberry after court adjourned.
Kennedy said their friend “just got himself in the wrong situation. He’s not that type of person.”
Landerway and McGriff said they and Stansberry are on the Kingston High School football team — for which Stansberry was a defensive back and backup quarterback this past season — and recently attended the team banquet. Landerway said he and Stansberry toured colleges together and that both planned to continue their education after graduation.
Kennedy and Landerway nodded in agreement when McGriff described their friend as a “nice person, an outgoing person” who was always there when his friends needed him.
Other friends and family members of the defendants also filled the courtroom Tuesday. The defendants were guarded by two sheriff’s deputies, two corrections officers, at least one town of Ulster police officer and the town police chief.
The fatal shooting happened midday Saturday on Sawkill Road. Lancaster was taken from the scene by ambulance and declared dead
at the HealthAlliance Hospital’s Broadway Campus in Kingston, police said.
Police have not said what led to the shooting death or disclosed the previous relationship, if any, between the suspects and the victim.
Police said one of the boys was arrested at 341 Sawkill Road at 12:15 p.m. Saturday, shortly before authorities closed the road between Washington Avenue and U.S. Route 209 for several hours due to the police activity; and the other was arrested at 9:23 p.m. Saturday at an unspecified location in the city of Kingston.
The elder Stansberry was arrested at 7:08 p.m. Saturday, police said.
The younger Stansberry is being represented by local attorney Joseph O’Connor. Gardener is represented by Paul Gruner, also a local attorney, and the elder Stansberry is represented by Ulster County Public Defender Andrew Kossover.