Crime & Safety
Wallkill Resident Hired Man To Kill His Neighbor: DA
Prosecutors said he paid someone $15,000 to kill his neighbor and acted as a look-out.
WALLKILL, NY — An Orange County man who was accused of hiring someone to kill his neighbor is facing multiple felony charges.
Orange County District Attorney David Hoovler announced that on Monday Enoch Lowe, 25, of Wallkill, was arraigned on an indictment charging him with the following felonies:
- First-degree murder
- Second-degree murder
- Tampering with physical evidence
- Second-degree conspiracy
The charges are in connection with the death of his next-door neighbor Jeffrey Harris, 53, a Wallkill man who was found stabbed multiple times inside the detached garage of his residence.
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Lowe was sent to the Orange County Jail in lieu of $2 million bail, $3 million secured bond or $10 million partially secured bond.
He is next scheduled to appear in court Dec. 1.
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Prosecutors said Lowe conspired with Damante T. Stansberry, 24, of Middletown, to kill Harris, with whom Lowe had long-standing animosity.
On Oct. 30, 2022, around 5 p.m., Stansberry arrived at Harris’s home and repeatedly stabbed him. Harris had been repairing a fence in the backyard of his home.
On March 30, Stansberry pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in connection with Harris’s death. Stansberry is awaiting sentencing.
An investigation conducted by the Town of Wallkill Police Department and other agencies resulted in Lowe’s arrest Oct. 10.
The case was presented to an Orange County grand jury which charged Lowe, saying he agreed to pay Stansberry $15,000 to kill the man and acted as look-out, texting Stansberry to signal that the victim was outside his home, alone and vulnerable to an attack.
Hoovler said Harris was senselessly killed while working in his own backyard on a Sunday afternoon.
“There is no place where people should feel safer than in their own homes,” he said.
Hoovler commended the Wallkill police and the other agencies whose efforts included not only pursuing the person who wielded the knife, but the person who was responsible for putting this tragic chain of events in motion.
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