Karina ‘race’ twist
The confessed killer of Queens jogger Karina Vetrano told detectives he hated the victim’s predominantly white neighborhood of Howard Beach, leading cops to believe race played a role in the murder, sources told The Post.
“I don’t like those people over there,” said Chanel Lewis, 20, who is black and split time between homes in the largely impoverished neighborhoods of East New York and Brownsville, according to sources.
Lewis made the statement to a black detective when asked why he killed Vetrano, whose body was found strangled in Spring Creek Park. His comment caused cops to believe race was a factor in Vetrano’s slaying, sources said.
A white detective initially tried twice to get Lewis to talk and he refused, according to sources.
But when the black detective, Barry Brown, interviewed him, Lewis waived his Miranda rights and gave two videotaped statements, confessing he’d “hit” and “choked” the jogger on Aug. 2.
Brown is known as a highly skilled officer and the “best detective in Queens for getting confessions,” sources said.
In 1986, racial tensions were inflamed in the city when a black construction worker was chased by a mob of white teens in Howard Beach onto a highway, where he was struck dead by a car.
On Tuesday afternoon, Vetrano’s grieving father, Phil, visited his daughter’s murder site, spending time at the makeshift memorial he’s created with rocks taken from the path of his child’s final run. He expressed his relief that cops have caught his daughter’s alleged killer in a Monday post on a GoFundMe page set up in her honor.
“As you all know by now we have caught this piece of s--t,” the father wrote. “As we expected he is a loner loser. He will pay for his crime. I want to thank all of you who have supported us so long.”
Lewis had a history of threatening female students in high school, telling a teacher’s aide at the HS for Medical Professions in Brooklyn in 2011 that he wanted to “stab all the girls.”
That same year he “cursed at a female student and threatened both her and her family,” according to law-enforcement sources.
Lewis also told authorities that he had gone to Spring Creek Park to cool off after fighting with family members the day of the murder.
He became “startled” by Vetrano’s presence and took his anger out on her, Lewis told cops, according to sources.