Shooter given 20 to life, again, for 2007 killing
TWO BROOKLYN men pistolwhipped a kidnapping victim and seared him with a hot iron to make him turn over drugs and money, authorities said Tuesday.
Brooklyn federal prosecutors said Michael Crumble, 34, and Ramell Markus, 35, carried out a gruesome gunpoint kidnapping in which they beat the victim with a handgun, broke a glass on his face and burned him on his arms with an iron.
“No human deserves to be beat, burned and pistol-whipped into submission,” said FBI Assistant Director-in-Charge William Sweeney in a statement.
The pair and another, unidentified co-conspirator, abducted the man in December for eight terrifying hours, according to prosecutors. The men took the victim first to a Brooklyn residence and then a hotel in the hopes of extracting more drugs and cash from him.
Both men were remanded Tuesday at their arraignment. They face up to life imprisonment if convicted on charges including kidnapping and extortion. A GUNMAN convicted last month for the shooting death of a Brooklyn mom was sentenced to 20 years to life Tuesday — after an identical verdict was tossed out in 2015.
Darius Dubarry stood trial for the Dec. 15, 2007, slaying of nurse Carol Simon, 35, who was caught in the crossfire of a gang shootout outside her family’s Eastern Parkway home.
Simon’s 9-year-old son was waiting in her car when she got out to retrieve something from the home — and was suddenly struck down.
“This defendant senselessly took the life of an innocent bystander … leaving a young boy without his mother and devastating her family,” District Attorney Eric Gonzalez said.
Dubarry was first found guilty — and also sentenced to 20 years to life — in 2009. But the Court of Appeals ordered a new trial, ruling he was wrongly convicted of both intentional murder and “depraved indifference murder,” arguing the two charges were “mutually exclusive.”
Dubarry, a member of the religious group Black Israelites, claimed the shootout with a Crips gang member was in self-defense.