FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Tuesday, May 19, 2015
Brooklyn Man Sentenced to 18 Years to Life in Prison For Shooting Death of 17-Year-Old
Victim Shot and Killed After Leaving Bedford-Stuyvesant Nightclub
Brooklyn District Attorney Ken Thompson today announced that a 20-year-old East New York man has been sentenced to 18 years to life in prison for the shooting death of a 17-year-old boy who was walking to the subway with friends after leaving a nightclub near Fulton Street and Bedford Avenue.
District Attorney Thompson said, “This murder is senseless and terribly sad as the young man who died was basically shot over nothing. This defendant has now been held accountable and will have at least the next 18 years to think about how he took the victim’s life and ruined his own.”
The District Attorney identified the defendant as Claude Ward, 20, of Loring Street, in East New York, Brooklyn. He was sentenced by Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Alan Marrus to 18 years to life in prison on May 4, 2015, following his conviction last month on one count of second-degree murder and one count of second-degree criminal possession of a weapon following a jury trial.
The District Attorney said that, according to trial testimony, on July 27, 2013, at approximately 3:55 a.m., in the vicinity of Fulton Street and Bedford Avenue, in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Kamau Chandler, 17, and a group of friends left a nightclub and were walking along Fulton Street on the way to the subway station.
Meanwhile, according to trial testimony, the defendant and a friend were walking on the opposite side of Fulton Street. They then crossed the street and Ward intentionally bumped into Kamau Chandler. A brief argument ensued. As the defendant was walking backward, still arguing with the victim and his friends, he fell into a pile of garbage bags stacked on the sidewalk. When the victim and his friends started to laugh, Ward pulled a 22-caliber handgun from his pocket and shot Chandler twice, once in the chest and once in the head.
Ward and his friend then fled the scene and he was arrested several weeks later at a relative’s apartment in the Bronx.
The case was prosecuted by Senior Assistant District Attorney Robert Walsh, of the District Attorney’s Homicide Bureau, under the supervision of Deputy District Attorney Kenneth M. Taub, Bureau Chief.