3 Charged With Murder in Death of Former Cuomo Aide

Pictured: Brooklyn D.A. Ken Thompson discusses the crime scene Wednesday. Photo by John V. Santore.

CROWN HEIGHTS, BROOKLYN — Three Brooklyn men have been charged with the murder of Bronx native and former Andrew Cuomo aide Carey Gabay, Brooklyn District Attorney Ken Thompson announced Wednesday.

Gabay, 43, died in September, 2015 after being caught in the crossfire of an alleged gang shootout at 1680 Bedford Ave., outside the Ebbets Field Houses in Crown Heights.

At the time, Gabay had been returning from the neighborhood's annual J'ouvert festival, which proceeds the West Indian-American Day Parade.

The indicted men — Micah Alleyne, 24, of Jamaica, Queens, Tyshawn Crawford, 21, of East New York, and Keith Luncheon, 24, of Crown Heights — are all accused of being gang members who participated in, or were present during, the fatal gun battle.

Thompson's office has not charged any of them with firing the shot that killed Gabay.

However, each has been charged with "depraved indifference murder under the theory of mutual combat," according to the DA's office.

According to Thompson, by voluntarily engaging in a gunfight, each defendant is as responsible for Gabay's death as the person who fired the shot that hit him — the identity of whom Thompson said remains an open question.

Image via Brooklyn District Attorney's Office.

A fourth, previously indicted individual, Stanley Elianor, 25, of Brownsville, is also accused of having been present at the crime scene with a loaded Mac-10 machine gun, and is facing weapons charges.

Elianor's gun was later recovered with his DNA on it, the DA's office said. However, Thompson has not accused Elianor of shooting the weapon during the firefight.

Image via Brooklyn District Attorney's Office.

Alleyne, Crawford and Luncheon were arraigned Wednesday afternoon. They are due back in court on Sept. 7.

At the scene of the crime

At Wednesday's press conference, Thompson presented a harrowing account of the shooting, which the DA said involved at least 8 shooters and two to three dozen shots.

According to Thompson, the Ebbets Field Houses territory is controlled by the Folk Nation street gang, of which Alleyne was allegedly a member.

At 3:40 a.m. on Sept. 7 last year, members of the gang were mixed in with numerous community members on the patio outside the housing project, Thompson said, when a group of rival gang members from 8-Trey, affiliated with the Crips, approached the property.

"When they see each other," Thompson said of the gang members, "there is no talking, just shooting."

According to the DA's office, Alleyne, who was arrested in May, admitted to firing his gun, while surveillance footage showed Luncheon, a member of 8-Trey, shooting his weapon as well.

Crawford, allegedly a member of Hoodstarz, a Folk Nation ally, was seen on surveillance footage pulling out a weapon, the DA said. Crawford was arrested in November with a gun that matched shell casings found at the crime scene, according to Thompson.

As community members fled the "absolutely pandemonium" around them, Thompson said, Gabay ran into the building's parking lot, where he took cover between two cars. However, he was fatally struck in the head with a bullet, dying several days later.

"I have never seen an event in which so many individual with so many weapons committed a crime," said NYPD commissioner Bill Bratton, who also spoke at Wednesday's press conference.

Outside the Ebbets Fields Houses, where the shooting occurred. Image via Google Maps.

Thompson said law enforcement is pursuing the other shooters believed to have fired weapons that night. Following his remarks, Bratton was overheard telling Gabay's mother, also present at the press conference, that his department was close to bringing charges against three or four other individuals.

Assessments of the suspects

At the press conference, Gabay was lauded as an example for other young men to emulate.

A first-generation American of Jamaican heritage, he attended Harvard College and Harvard Law School, and worked as an attorney for both Gov. Cuomo and the Empire State Development Corporation.

Alphonso David, another Cuomo staffer who said he worked with Gabay, described him as "tremendous," adding, "His story was New York at its best."

When asked what life circumstances might have led Alleyne, Crawford and Luncheon to their alleged role in Gabay's shooting, Thompson replied, "I'm not sure how they took the path, but we are going to make sure they take the path to prison."

Bratton — who, following a shooting at a rap concert in Manhattan, blamed "so-called rap artists" who are actually "thugs that basically celebrate the violence" — offered a bleak assessment of the suspects.

"We'll never be able to get into the heads of these young men, because they are mindless," he said. Regarding their loyalty to gangs, Bratton said law enforcement "can't figure it out, as much as we try, but we'll continue to try."

At their arraignment, attorneys with the DA's office said Luncheon and Crawford had each been charged with serious crimes in the past.

Luncheon had already been hit with a manslaughter charge following a fatal car crash, the attorney said, as well as with possession of a weapon and credit card fraud.

The lawyer said Crawford had previously been charged with criminal possession of a weapon and felony robbery.

Attorneys Jay Cohen and Howard Kirsch, representing Luncheon and Crawford, respectively, said they had just been given their clients' cases, and didn't know them well enough to comment on their character.

But attorney Louis Rosenthal, the attorney for Alleyne, said his client came from a good home, and hadn't previously been accused of any serious crimes.

Alleyne's mother is a nurse, Rosenthal said, adding that his client was a high school graduate who had studied flobotomy and hoped to be a physician's assistant.

Alleyne is from Brooklyn, but at the time of the shooting was living in a Queens shelter with the mother of his child, Rosenthal said.

The attorney declined to comment on whether Alleyne was affiliated with a gang.

Lessons from the killing

Bratton told reporters that leading up to this year's West Indian-American Day Parade, the NYPD would be apply "intense scrutiny" to those suspected of being in a gang.

"If so much as a sneeze comes out of any of these gang members, we will be there," he said.

The commissioner also said that the Department of Transportation may install additional lighting, at least temporarily, near the festival to help increase security.

"This is a death that will count for something," Bratton said, looking at members of Gabay's family who attended the press conference.

Thompson said many of the guns on New York's streets come from southern states with lax gun laws, while Alphonso David, the Cuomo staffer, said the shooting showed the need for strong new federal regulations to prevent guns from crossing New York's border.

A spokesman for Thompson said the DA's office had yet to trace the guns to their point of origin.