QUEENS DISTRICT ATTORNEY
Queens DA

QUEENS D.A. RICHARD A. BROWN REPORTS

QUEENS YOUTH SENTENCED TO 51 YEARS TO LIFE

Queens District Attorney Richard A. Brown announced that a Queens youth has been sentenced to 51 and 1/3 years to life in prison for murder and other charges for the brutal slaying in February 2004 of a young Chinese food deliveryman who was robbed, beaten with a bat and a hammer and stabbed and whose lifeless body was dumped in a pond.

District Attorney Brown said, “The crime was callous and vicious and the punishment imposed by the Court of 51 and 1/3 years to life in prison is more than warranted. The victim, 18-year-old Huang Chen, was his family’s hope and pride and his death has left them shattered by grief. I hope that they find solace in the knowledge that justice has been done.”

The District Attorney identified the defendant as Charles Bryant, 17, of 245-39 147th Drive in Rosedale, Queens. He was convicted on March 16, 2005 of Murder in the Second Degree, Robbery in the First Degree and Tampering With Physical Evidence by a jury after a three week trial before Queens Supreme Court Justice Robert C. Hanophy who earlier today imposed sentence of 51 and 1/3 years to life in prison.

The District Attorney said that according to the trial testimony sometime after 10 p.m. on Friday, February 13, 2004 at 168-24 127th Street in Rochdale Village, a housing development in South Jamaica, Queens, the defendant, and others placed a food order for a delivery to an apartment at 168-24 127th Street.

The defendant -- and two alleged accomplices –- attacked the victim, Huang Chen, 18, by beating him with a bat and a hammer and stabbing him in the upper torso with a knife during a robbery inside the residence.

After the fatal attack, the defendant disposed of physical evidence of the crime including blood-stained clothing and dumped the victim’s body in a pond in Brookville Park a few miles away.

One of the alleged accomplices, Defendant Nayquan Miller, 16, of 168-24 127th Avenue in Jamaica, Queens is being held without bail on murder charges pending trial.