HALL SLAY
Girl, 17, shot dead after Coney confrontation
BROOKLYN FEDERAL jurors ruled largely for artists Tuesday in a groundbreaking court battle over whitewashed graffiti at the aerosol art mecca 5 Pointz.
Twenty-one artists sued real estate developer Jerry Wolkoff, saying the 49 pieces of grafitti art he blotted out at the Long Island City, Queens, spot in 2013 were legally protected. Wolkoff’s attorneys argued the artists knew for years their industrial-scale canvas was coming down but did nothing to preserve their creations.
Each side should be able to fully tabulate the damages by Wednesday in a verdict sheet that runs more than 100 pages long.
“This is a clear message from the people that the whitewash of the building by its owner Gerald Wolkoff was a cruel and willful act,” Eric Baum, the lawyer for the artists, told the Daily News.
The decision is only the first sketch on the issue of whether Wolkoff should be on the hook.
The sides agreed to make the jury ruling advisory, according to court transcripts. Judge Frederic Block will make the final rulings.
Wolkoff’s lawyers declined to comment on the jury decision. A 17-YEAR-OLD girl was shot dead by a neighbor in the hallway of her Brooklyn apartment building early Tuesday, police said.
Victim Alyssa Rodriguez’s 20-year-old boyfriend Armani McLeod was also shot in the arm during the 4:15 a.m. clash on the fourth floor of the building in the Site 8 Houses on W. 35th St. in Coney Island.
The couple had knocked on the gunman’s door minutes earlier, police sources said. A 25-year-old man identified as Jean Pierre Pacheco answered, and an argument flared before gunshots erupted.
Another neighbor, who declined to give her name, said she stepped out of her apartment and found McLeod and the suspect arguing.
“I told them, ‘Calm down, stop arguing because people are sleeping,’ ” she said. “(McLeod) said somebody took his money. I said, ‘OK, let it go.’ Then he ran down the stairs.” She told Alyssa to drop it. “I said, ‘Leave it, baby girl, just go in the house,’ ” the neighbor recalled. “She had no shoes on. Then (McLeod) came back up. She was crying, saying, ‘Let’s go in the house, let’s go in the house.’ Then I went back inside because I hear this every day, the bickering.”
A few minutes later, she heard McLeod banging on Pacheco’s door again. Then she heard gunfire. Alyssa was shot once in the chest, police said.
Another building resident, Steven McCain, 43, said he came out of his apartment when he heard the shot and found Alyssa on the floor. McLeod and a few other witnesses were around her, trying to revive her.
“She was lying facedown on the ground,” McCain said. “They were trying to revive her, trying to get her up, but she was gone.
“(McLeod) was sitting on the ground, holding his arm, and his girlfriend was just laid out in front of him,” he said. “They kept trying to pick her up, saying, ‘Wake up! Wake up!’ She didn’t wake up.”
Medics rushed Alyssa to Coney Island Hospital, but she could not be saved. She had never been in trouble with the law before, police said.
“She was a nice girl,” the neighbor said of Alyssa. “Her poor mother. ”
Pacheco, who police sources said was arrested but never indicted in a homicide in Coney Island in 2009, fled the building and is being sought by police, sources said.
On Tuesday afternoon, the fourth-floor walls were still spattered with blood. A pair of shoes, a baseball cap and several bloodsoaked cloths littered the floor.
Alyssa stayed at her boyfriend’s home at times, but did not live there, according to neighbors. One said the teen and McLeod had been dating for about a year. McLeod’s mother recently told that neighbor she planned to leave Brooklyn.
But the move didn’t come soon enough to save her son’s girlfriend.
“Her transfer had come in and she said was getting out of here,” the neighbor said. “She said she wanted to move out of state, take her kids out of state.”