Court fixture fond farewell
THEY COULD have been blowing out candles for his birthday.
Instead, Tashawn Bromfield’s relatives burst into tears in a Bronx courtroom Thursday as they watched video of the innocent 16-year-old staggering to the ground after being shot six years ago.
The trial for his accused killer — reputed gangster Reginald Goldman — began on the same day when the slain teen would have turned 22 years old.
“I wish I could be anywhere else right now,” said Tashawn’s sister, Tamoya, outside the trial room in Bronx Supreme Court. “That’s my little brother. To have him not here, it breaks my heart.”
Tamoya clutched her teary face with crumpled tissues as jurors watched video showing her brother dropping after a bullet struck him in the back in the courtyard in front of a Fenton Ave. apartment building near Boston Road in Williamsbridge.
Tashawn, a junior at Maloney High School in Meriden, Conn., had been visit- ing his father early on Aug. 14, 2010 when he got caught in the middle of a gang war.
A gold sedan full of Young Gunnerz — one of the crews busted in this week’s historic takedown of 120 gangsters — rolled up to the courtyard where Tashawn had been hanging out with two friends after picking up Slurpees at 7/11.
Prosecutors say Goldman leaned out of the passenger side door and fired twice into the grassy area — sending a bullet through Tashawn’s back and into his chest.
Tashawn had been a math buff who played three varsity sports and planned to attend college, relatives said.
He was not involved in any gangs, and is not believed to be the intended target.
“He was yet another casualty in a war he did not enlist in,” said Assistant District Attorney Lisa Davis in her opening statement.
Goldman had already been doing state time for gang assault in 2012 when prosecutors found his DNA on the car seat, and charged him with murder. SHE’S HAD her day in court, andthen some.
Jewel McCollin, 63, shed tears and hugged colleagues Thursday as she walked out of the State Supreme Court Building at 60 Centre St. in Manhattan, after 37 years on the job, to applause from morethan 250 officers.
“It’s a mixed blessing,” McCollin, chief of the DepartmentofPublic SafetyforNew York State Courts for more than eight years, said of retiring. “I put a lot of time in, met a lot of good people, made a lot of good innovations for the uniformed force. Now it’s time to spend some time with mygrandsonandmyfamily.” A 43-YEAR-OLD woman was pistol-whipped and suffered a serious head wound during a robbery on her Brooklyn block Thursday afternoon, police said.
The woman was walking down Montauk Ave. near Dumont Ave. in East New York when she was attacked about 1:25 p.m., cops said.
She was rushed to Brookdale University Hospital with a non-life threatening wound, officials said.
Cops are looking for two suspects who ran from the scene.