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Two found guilty in slay of volunteer
Mom: ‘They’re finally gone’
By Laura Crimaldi | Thursday, December 2, 2010 | http://www.bostonherald.com | Local Coverage
Photo by Herald file
The family of an innocent young Meals on Wheels volunteer fatally struck by a gangbanger’s bullet finally saw justice yesterday, with guilty verdicts for the two thugs whose previous trials had ended with deadlocked juries.
“I’m going straight to the cemetery to see my son and tell him we won. He can rest now. He can rest,” said a tearful Natasha Steele, who buried her 18-year-old son, Cedirick, at Oak Lawn Cemetery in Roslindale in 2007. “I’m just so happy.”
Antwan “Twizz” Carter and Daniel “Trap” Pinckney Jr., both 22 and from the South End, will be sentenced today to life in prison. They were convicted by a Suffolk County jury of first-degree murder.
Prosecutors had painted a portrait of a chillingly senseless murder.
The defendants, members of the Mass. Ave Hornet gang, were driving in Pinckney’s black Pontiac around Highland Avenue in Roxbury on the sunny afternoon of March 14, 2007, when they saw a group of people they thought were rival gang members. After a brief exchange, Pinckney drove the Pontiac a short distance and pulled into an alley. Pinckney gave Carter gloves and a handgun and instructed him to wear the gloves to shoot at one of the rivals, prosecutors said.
“Shoot anyone,” Pinckney allegedly ordered.
Carter fired eight times, and the shots instead struck Steele, who was standing in the same area. He was shot in the face, torso and neck, prosecutors said.
Steele, a Bunker Hill Community College student, was not involved in any gang activity and was waiting for his mother to pick him up when he was shot. He was a graduate of Madison Park High School and a volunteer for Meals on Wheels.
“This shattered his family and shattered those that knew him,” Suffolk District Attorney Daniel F. Conley said. “Make no mistake about it, these defendants got what they deserved.”
The verdict marked the end of a long and dark legal ordeal. The first two trials against Pinckney and Carter — who was recorded by police plotting to kill a witness — ended with deadlocked juries. Pinckney’s ex-girlfriend, Latoya Thomas-Dickson, pleaded guilty to perjury for her previous testimony just before this trial began.
Conley thanked the jury for its service, as Steele’s family breathed a sigh of relief.
“They’re gone. They’re finally gone,” Natasha Steele said in a tearful conversation with a relative after the guilty verdicts were announced.
Clutching a heart-shaped necklace charm with a picture of her son and the words “Always Your First Born,” she then left the courthouse to bring a “bunch of joy” to his grave.
Article URL: http://www.bostonherald.com/news/regional/view.bg?articleid=1300266
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