Gunman convicted in holiday killing
BRONX, NEW YORK, JULY 1- District Attorney Robert Johnson announced the jury conviction of 32-year-old Cadman Williams in the Memorial Day weekend 2008 killing of a Yonkers man.
Danced over victim as he lay dying
After a six-week-long trial and two hours of deliberation, the Bronx Supreme Court jury found Williams guilty of: manslaughter in the first degree (Class B Felony) and criminal possession of a weapon in the second degree (Class C Felony).
When he is sentenced by Justice Dominic R. Massaro on July 23rd, Williams faces as many as 40 years in prison.
Kenneth Sackey of Yonkers was celebrating not only a new job, but the long, hot, holiday weekend, returning from a family barbecue the evening before Memorial Day to his brother’s apartment in the Bronx. But as they returned to 1749 Grand Concourse, Sackey was loaded for bear, with an attitude and a bat – and when he saw some of the kids with whom he had a spat the night before, he was going to show who was boss. The 42-year-old Kenneth took his bat, and with a backhanded swing, cracked it against the entryway of the building, shattering the wood and sending splinters flying out across the sidewalk.
Williams was friendly with the kids, but he had not been at the deli with them the day before. He was not bruised by the bat, but his ego took a hit. So he hit back, drawing out his .22 caliber revolver, and squeezed off three-to-four shots – two of which hit their mark. Kenneth Sackey tried to flee through the apartment house, but video showed him falling and writhing in pain during his last minutes of life. Either bullet alone would have killed Sackey, as the one in his back struck a major vein that leads back to the heart. The bullet to the victim’s face traveled
through to his spine.
Another surveillance video showed Williams moments after he walked past his dying victim, dancing a heartless jig as he took the elevator up to his then-girlfriend’s apartment.
The case against Williams gained some notoriety for the delays bringing it to trial, resulting in an unusually long Rikers Island stay for the defendant. He will be credited for the nearly seven years he spent at Rikers awaiting trial.
The primary delay involved defense requests that admissibility of the DNA found on the murder weapon be stayed until a Brooklyn judge rendered a decision regarding that type of DNA in an unrelated case. That decision finally came late last year. But the issue DNA in Williams’ case became irrelevant when the defendant testified on the stand that he, indeed, had fired the fatal shots.
The case against Williams was prosecuted by Bronx Senior Trial Assistant D.A. George Suminski and A.D.A. Amy Schneider of Trial Bureau 20/50.
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