Syracuse man guilty in poker-game shooting after jury hears from 4 dead witnesses
Updated 11:10 AM;
Syracuse, NY A Syracuse man will head back to prison for a possible life sentence after a jury found him guilty again of a 2015 shooting at a high-stakes poker game.
Charquan Edwards, now 29, shot an 83-year-old man while fleeing the Tallman Street residence with $9,000 in wagers laid out on a table, prosecutor Lauren Phelps told the jury.
The victim, George Smith, has since died of unrelated causes, as did three other witnesses present that night. A fifth witness was hospitalized during last week’s retrial in Onondaga County.
Man found guilty in poker-game shooting after jury hears from 4 dead witnesses
Updated 11:26 AM;
Syracuse, NY A Syracuse man will head back to prison for a possible life sentence after a jury found him guilty again of a 2015 shooting at a high-stakes poker game.
Charquan Edwards, now 29, shot an 83-year-old man while fleeing the Tallman Street residence with $9,000 in wagers laid out on a table, prosecutor Lauren Phelps told the jury.
The victim, George Smith, has since died of unrelated causes, as did three other witnesses present that night. A fifth witness was hospitalized during last week’s retrial in Onondaga County.
Jury hears from 4 dead people in high-stakes poker game shooting in Syracuse
Updated 3:15 PM;
Syracuse, NY It’s not often that a criminal jury gets to hear sworn testimony from dead people.
But the Onondaga County jury in the case of Charquan Edwards heard from four dead witnesses and another who is hospitalized this week during an attempted murder trial.
Edwards, 29, was granted a new trial after procedural errors led his 2015 attempted murder conviction to be thrown out by an appellate court.
In the six years since, the victim of the attempted murder, George Smith, has died of unrelated health issues and three others have also died. A fifth witness is currently hospitalized.
A murder disaster, a bar shooting, a stolen cop gun: Syracuse man gets 15 years
Updated Jan 12, 2021;
Syracuse, NY Men went hunting for Yasire Boatman in October 2018, looking to kill him over a fistfight, authorities said. But his executioner missed, instead killing a 12-year-old boy.
After pleading guilty to illegal weapon possession in the bar shooting in January 2020, Boatman was released from jail by County Court Judge Matthew Doran pending sentencing.
Boatman has remained jailed ever since his February 2020 arrest in the stolen gun incident. On Tuesday, his complicated court case ended when Doran sentenced him to prison for 15 years.