FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Monday, June 8, 2015
Brooklyn Man Who Shot and Paralyzed 11-Year-Old Girl Sentenced To 17 Years in State Prison
Child Caught in Gunfire As Defendant Fired At Rival Gang Members
Brooklyn District Attorney Ken Thompson today announced that a 19-year-old Bedford-Stuyvesant man was sentenced to 17 years in prison for a 2013 shooting that left an 11-year-old girl paralyzed. The defendant pleaded guilty last month to one count of first-degree assault.
District Attorney Thompson said, “Today’s sentence spares the child victim in this case the trauma of testifying about the life-altering day when she was shot by this defendant. She can now go on with her life knowing he will spend many years in prison as punishment for what he did. Senseless gun violence between gangs has devastating consequences and will not be tolerated.”
The District Attorney identified the defendant as Kane Cooper, 19, of 701 Gates Avenue, in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. He appeared today before Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Joseph Gubbay, who sentenced him to 17 years in prison and five years’ post-release supervision. Cooper pleaded guilty last month to one count of first-degree assault.
The District Attorney said that, according to the investigation, on May 31, 2013, the victim, Tayloni Mazyck, who was 11-years-old at the time, was sitting in front of her building at 600 Gates Avenue, in Bedford-Stuyvesant, with her mother and cousins, when she was struck by one of 10 bullets fired by Cooper. The defendant was firing in the direction of several purported members of the ‘Gates Avenue Mafia,’ who were hanging out half-a-block away in front of 590 Gates Avenue.
Tayloni was struck by one bullet that lodged in her spine and left her paralyzed from the waist down.
The case was prosecuted by Assistant District Attorney Edward Carroll, Chief of the District Attorney’s Crime Strategies Unit.
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