Student slay at J’Ouvert goes to jury
A Brooklyn jury will begin deliberating Wednesday in the trial of a Crown Heights man accused of fatally shooting a college student during J’Ouvert festivities three years ago.
Tiarah Poyau, a 22-year-old St. John’s University grad student from East New York, was killed while out with friends at the annual celebration of Caribbean culture in the early hours of Sept. 5, 2016.
Prosecutors have relied heavily on ballistics evidence in tying Regeland Moise, 22, to her death, who they charge fired aimlessly into a crowd of festivalgoers, killing Poyau.
In his closing arguments Tuesday, Assistant District Attorney Andres Palacio said shell casings found at two other scenes that night that were fired from a gun Moise admitted to owning matched those at the scene on Empire Blvd. and Franklin Ave., where Poyau was fatally shot.
“The bullet came in through her left eyebrow and tore through her brain,” Palacio said. “She had just graduated from college and she had everything in front of her — the world was her oyster.”
Poyau was in the process of obtaining her master’s degree in accounting and had accepted a position at PricewaterhouseCoopers just a month before she died.
Moise’s attorney, Norman Steiner, asked the jury to consider how no eyewitnesses testified at the trial, nor was anybody at the scene able to identify the shooter as a man or a woman.
Moise’s DNA was not recovered where Poyau was killed, Steiner noted, nor was the victim’s blood found on his belongings.
“You don’t know, as you sit here right now, as it happened,” Steiner said. “Nobody can point the finger and tell you: it’s him.”
In an interview with the Daily News days after Poyau’s killing, Moise was brought to tears discussing the woman’s death and insisted he had no recollection of the event. “I think of that night, but I don’t see me shooting her,” he said.