FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Wednesday, June 28, 2017
Lower East Side Man Convicted of Murder for Shooting Death
Stemming from Decades-Old Dispute
That Started in a Small Village in China
Defendant Shot the Elderly Victim Three Times on a Sunset Park Street
Following Chance Encounter at Wedding
Acting Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez today announced that a 46-year-old man has been convicted of murder and criminal possession of a weapon for the 2015 fatal shooting of a 68-year-old man in Sunset Park.
Acting District Attorney Gonzalez said, “This defendant held a grudge for more than 20 years and used deadly violence to settle a score. A dispute that should have ended in a village in China instead resulted in gunshots on the streets of Brooklyn. He has now been held accountable for his actions.”
The Acting District Attorney identified the defendant as Wu Long Chen, 46, of the Lower East Side in Manhattan. He was convicted yesterday of one count of second-degree murder and one count of second-degree criminal possession of a weapon following a jury trial before Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Neil Firetog, who set sentencing for July 17, 2017. The defendant faces up to 25 years to life in prison.
The Acting District Attorney said that, according to trial testimony, on December 7, 2015, at approximately 9:35 p.m., the defendant followed the victim after he left the wedding reception of a mutual friend, held at the Golden Imperial Palace restaurant on Sixth Avenue in Sunset Park. Both men had attended the wedding, but were seated at different tables.
The defendant was captured on surveillance video following the victim to Seventh Avenue and 61st Street, where he shot the victim in the head, chest and arm. When his gun jammed, the defendant dropped it and fled the scene. The victim walked into a Popeye’s Chicken restaurant, where he collapsed. He was taken by ambulance to Lutheran Medical Center, where he died from his injuries.
The victim, Ying Guan Chen, 68, was the father of the defendant’s former neighbors in China. Wu Long and the victim’s sons had heated arguments, decades ago in China, about Wu Long’s family building an additional floor in their property that hovered over the victim’s family’s home. Ultimately, there was a physical altercation between both families which, according to the defendant, resulted in a serious injury to one of his relatives. The defendant harbored a grudge, according to testimony, and since he couldn’t find the victim’s sons he sought retribution by killing the victim instead, even though he had no involvement in the dispute.
The defendant fled New York and was captured in Laredo, Texas on December 31, 2015, as he tried to make his way to Mexico.
The case was prosecuted by Assistant District Attorney Howard Jackson, Deputy Chief of the District Attorney’s Homicide Bureau, and Senior Assistant District Attorney Lauren Silver, of the District Attorney’s Special Victims Bureau, under the supervision of Assistant District Attorney Timothy Gough, Homicide Bureau Chief.
#