LOVE AND MURDER
Woman killed in Bx. was holdout juror in
A woman who was the lone holdout juror in a homicide case after she fell hard for the suspect became a murder victim herself when she was gunned down near her Bronx home.
Katherine Diop, 29, died after she and her brother argued with another customer Wednesday night at a deli in Fordham Manor, said police.
Diop made headlines in 2012 when she served on a Bronx jury and fell for the defendant — and her insistence at Devon Thomas’ innocence led to a mistrial. Thomas ended up being convicted of manslaughter at a second trial.
Diop became a murder victim herself near E. 194th St. and Marion Ave. after an argument at Los Perez Deli spilled outside about 11:20 p.m.
Friends said Diop and her brother visited to the deli to buy lighter fluid they needed at a neighborhood cookout they were throwing to celebrate a younger sister’s graduation.
Diop’s brother got into a clash with another customer, said the friends, and the fight spilled across the street.
Cops said the shooter appeared to be arguing with the 31-year-old brother, Maurice Diop, while his sister was waving a BB gun.
The gunman fired, striking Diop in her upper body and hitting her brother numerous times, cops said.
Camille Miguel, 46, was calling police when she heard the shots. By the time Miguel rushed outside, Katherine Diop was mortally wounded.
“I saw her brother fall,” Miguel said. “And then I saw her take two steps and then she dropped.” Miguel ran to her friend’s side. “I held her while she took her last breaths,” Miguel said. “She got shot five times — the back, which pierced her lungs; the chest, which pierced her heart. She got grazed in the stomach and twice in the arm.”
“It’s just something that was so petty, an argument,” Miguel added. “People just have to walk away from things. It’s people’s pride that gets them into these situations. And it’s just stupidity. I really believe it’s very ignorant. And as a people, we have to gather and love each other.”
Cops used tourniquets on the brother’s arm and leg and may have saved his life before medics arrived, authorities said.
Medics rushed the siblings to St. Barnabas Hospital. Diop could not be saved. Her brother was reported in stable condition.
Shell casings were recovered at the scene but the gunman got away, police said.
“It’s a crazy world,” Kyle Watters, Thomas’ defense lawyers at both of his trials, said Thursday after learning of Diop’s murder.
After Thomas’ first trial, Diop pursued a romantic relationship with him, and visited him more than 30 times at Rikers Island.
The prison bars that separated the pair may have doomed the relationship, Watters said. Diop ended up instead with Thomas’ brother.
“Devon’s brother, who was close with Devon, I guess had more contact with her though, because Devon was in jail,” Watters said.
“They looked alike,” said Watters. “So maybe he was the best second choice.”
Watters argued unsuccessfully in court that the brother Diop later ended up in a relationship with was the actual killer.
After she forced the hung jury, the Bronx District Attorney charged Diop with perjury for failing to disclose that her arrest record for trespass and disorderly conduct when she was questioned as a prospective juror.
“I didn’t want everyone to know my business,” Diop admitted to an investigator with the DA’s office, according to a criminal complaint against her. Diop pleaded guilty to misdemeanor perjury in 2016 and was sentenced to three years probation.
But her attorney, Bess Stiffelman,
told the Daily News the perjury case was a “vindictive prosecution.” Prosecutors mistakenly believed Thomas had shared incriminating evidence with Diop during their visits at Rikers, Stiffelman said. So they put the screws to her, hoping she’d take the stand against her crush.
“They just went after her because they were pissed she hung the jury. They were pissed she was visiting him,” Stiffelman said Thursday. She said the charges “(felt completely trumped up”)
She added that Diop wrote a letter to Thomas after the first trial suggesting he take the stand in his own defense at retrial.“(She did feel for him and thought he might be innocent, which is why she reached out to him — after the trial was over”) Stiffelman recalled.
At a second trial, Thomas was convicted of manslaughter for shooting aspiring basketball player Abdoul Toure in the Bronx in 2008. He is serving a 21-to-25-year prison term.
Diop’s violent death on
Wednesday night hit her friends and neighbors hard.
Miguel said she was especially close with Diop because the two families had lived in a shelter together. They moved to the same Bronx building three years ago. “She’s been through a lot,” Miguel said. “Her mother was on drugs when she was younger. She’s been through the foster care system and she overcame all of that.”
Miguel said Diop is survived by two younger sisters and a 7-year-old daughter. “Her little sister graduated yesterday and she got two certificates so they went to the graduation because her mother is sick in the hospital with a hernia,” Miguel said. “So they went to the graduation to support her sister, they came back, we grilled, they had a little bit of a celebration.”
Just hours before her death Diop proudly posted a picture of her little sister at the graduation ceremony. “My little sister is now a part of the honors society yall,” she proudly captioned the photo.
“It’s really sad,” Miguel said. “She was just talking about how she wanted to go back to school and get her associate’s degree, to show her daughter to get her education so she could be more encouraging and influence her sisters and her daughter.”
Neighbor Jessica Mickle, 23, said she is eager to leave the neighborhood.
Outside her home, driveway chalk was scrawled all over the sidewalk from neighborhood kids just feet away from a car stained with blood where Diop’s brother collapsed.
“There’s shooting everywhere but not like here,” said Mickle, whose children are 3 and 1. “Everything happens so fast. I don’t bring my kids outside over here. You can’t even have a good time on this block.”
In August, as the city was gripped by a frightening surge in shootings during the coronavirus lockdown, Diop made an emotional plea on Facebook. “Please lord end all of this gun violence,” she wrote. “Violence period against my people.
Everybody screaming Black Lives Matter but black lives are taking black lives. This s—t is unreal and it’s hitting too close to home now. I’m praying for my community cause there’s nothing else I can do.
Friend Jay Massiah walked up to Diop’s home Thursday, tears streaming down his face. He had come to tell Diop about a milestone he reached, 11 million followers on Tiktok, because she had always supported his comedy career only to get a phone call on his way over that she had been killed. “She was a hard worker, she worked very hard,” Massiah said. “We worked together at Applebees.”
Massiah said he was shocked by the news. “I’m like no, she can’t be. I just saw her, I literally just saw her. And I come out and it’s true. She was good. She didn’t deserve that.”
Massiah denounced the violence that took his friend’s life. “People don’t understand when you take one life how it affects many others,” he said.