Pleading guilty
David Simmon, 18, of Brooklyn, who was present during the murder last January of Nicole duFresne on Rivington and Clinton Sts., pleaded guilty on July 8 to a charge of attempting to rob a white leather jacket from a bouncer less than two hours before the murder.
Simmon pleaded guilty to helping Rudy Fleming, 19, of Staten Island, trying to take the jacket from the off-duty bouncer on the Lower East Side at about 1:35 a.m. Jan. 27 along with other accomplices.
At about 3 a.m. duFresne, an aspiring actress, and her friends were held up and Fleming is charged with pistol-whipping her boyfriend and then shooting duFresne. Simmon’s attorney, Sol Schwartzberg, said in court on July 8 that his client was standing apart from Fleming when the murder took place.
Barbara Thompson, a spokesperson for the district attorney’s office, said that Simmon would not be charged at this time in connection with the duFresne murder. Simmon, however, is to receive a six-year sentence on the attempted robbery as part of the plea bargain.
Arrested for robbery
Police arrested Tyrell Wright, 24, shortly after 2 p.m. Thurs. July 7 and charged him with impersonating a police officer and robbing a woman in the lobby of 424 Broadway near Canal St.
The suspect is charged with falsely identifying himself as a detective, then searching the victim and taking her wallet and cell phone. Police who were alerted by witnesses made the arrest near the scene.
Jumper death
A man identified as Yuk Tong, 63, jumped from a window in his eighth floor apartment in the Rutgers Houses between Madison and Cherry Sts. at about 9:30 p.m. Sat. July 9, police said. He was taken to Bellevue Hospital where he was pronounced dead. The incident is deemed an apparent suicide but there was no note.
Big house for Lil’ Kim
Lil’ Kim, the hip hop artist whose feud with a rival performer led to a shoot-out in February 2001 in front of 395 Hudson St., the home of Hot 97 radio, was sentenced to a year and a day in prison on Wed. July 6 for perjury before a 2003 grand jury hearing on the shootout.
Federal Judge Gerard Lynch noted at the sentencing that Kim, 30, whose real name is Kimberly Jones, lied three times under oath at the 2003 grand jury and also at her perjury trial in March of this year.
Kim, however, admitted at the sentencing that she lied. “I testified falsely at the grand jury and the trial,” she told Judge Lynch before he pronounced sentence. “At the time I thought it was the right thing to do but now I know it was wrong,” Kim said. She also admitted inducing her friend and co-defendant, Monique Dopwell, to lie.
Prosecutors had asked for a prison term of up to 41 months but Kim’s belated acknowledgement of perjury apparently worked in her favor.
The 2001 shooting broke out between two rap groups, one that followed Kim and the other that followed her rival, Foxy Brown. More than 20 shots were fired and one man was injured. Kim told the grand jury that she did not know two of the participants in the incident. She also testified in her own defense at the trial, saying she did not lie to the grand jury. Evidence at the trial in March included a video that showed her in the company of the two men in question.
—Albert Amateau
WWW Downtown Express
