Arielle Dollinger

The trouble did not really begin until the humans got involved. By the time the dust had settled and the police had arrived, the pit bull was dead — choked to death by the owner of the Shih Tzu.

The circumstances of the pit bull’s death in July, and the arrest of the Shih Tzu owner, Toquoc Huynh, were unusual enough. But just how unusual things had gotten became clearer Thursday, when the matter came up for a hearing in Suffolk County District Court.

The courthouse was crowded with observers wearing T-shirts that read #JusticeforRex, a social media hashtag connected to an effort to persuade prosecutors to bring a more serious charge against Huynh, who is currently charged with animal cruelty, a misdemeanor.

One Change.org petition, begun by a sister of one of the pit bull’s owners, has received more than 270,000 signatures; another has more 60,000. Even a court employee confessed empathy toward the protesters; he told them he had rescued two pit bulls himself, and shared photos of the dogs on his cellphone.

Such was the scene that greeted Huynh, as he was released on his own recognizance and told to return Oct. 24. He exited the courtroom wearing sunglasses, and had no comment for reporters. He did not address the protesters, who shouted “savage,” “murderer” and “animal killer” in his direction.

The statements given to the police after Rex’s death paint a divergent view of the events that led to the dog’s demise, and perhaps point to the difficulty in bringing more serious charges. The only thing seemingly not in dispute is that Huynh choked Rex, a blue-nosed pit bull, “to death in the presence of its owner,” according to the police report.

It was about 8:30 p.m. on July 14, when one of Rex’s owners, Dominic Primerano, said he took him out for a walk around their apartment complex in Hauppauge. Primerano said that Huynh’s Shih Tzu approached Rex and bit him on his back leg. Huynh said that Rex was the aggressor. The men both agreed that at some point, Huynh took his dog inside.

Primerano told the police that the goldendoodle, named Quincy, then attacked Rex, biting the dog on the neck. When Primerano tried to intervene, he said that the goldendoodle bit him on his face.

Huynh told the police that he saw Quincy in Rex’s jaws from the patio of his apartment. Quincy’s owner, Steven Rogers, credited Huynh with saving his pet’s life.

“I choked Rex to get him to stop biting Quincy,” Huynh wrote in a statement to the police. “Rex stopped bighting Quincy, but I kept choking Rex so he wouldn’t bite me and told the owner of Rex to get a leash.”

Rogers, 68, has his own court date, he said, for taking his dog outside without a leash.

Quincy had “eight puncture wounds, right in his chest,” Rogers said Thursday at his home.

“I thought it was going to be curtains for my dog,” he said.

Primerano told the police that as Huynh held Rex in a headlock, he said, “Your dog is going to die.” Rex’s other owner, Elana Greenfield, whose account was not in the police report, accused Huynh of additional taunts.

“I heard three gurgles, and he threw him on my lap, and said, ‘One down, one to go; you’re next,’” Greenfield said Thursday.

Nora Constance Marino, a Great Neck-based lawyer representing Primerano, said she has sent the assistant district attorney a letter making the argument for upgraded charges.

Those who gathered at the courthouse Thursday were on a mission not just to achieve “Justice for Rex,” as they chanted, but to show their support for Greenfield and Primerano. They also sought to combat the negative reputation of the pit bull breed.

Craig Fields, founder off New York Bully Crew, brought his dog, Mac, to court. Greenfield and Primerano smiled as they knelt down on the lawn with him.

Rex had made their house a home, Greenfield said.

“It’s our son,” Greenfield said, her voice quavering. “We raised him to have every single bone in his body be friendly.”

A spokeswoman for the Suffolk County district attorney’s office, which is prosecuting the case, declined to comment.

This article originally appeared in

A Pit Bull Was Strangled by a Neighbor. Then Came #JusticeforRex.

CENTRAL ISLIP, N.Y. — It began as a small-scale neighborhood dispute between a Shih Tzu and a pit bull named Rex. A goldendoodle soon entered the mix.

The McCoy family had hit that serene patch in Suffolk County, heading east in their Mazda as the sun neared its peak, just before noon on Valentine’s Day last year.

If they saw what was coming from behind, they did not have much time to react.

Not far behind them, Jamel Turner was behind the wheel of a 2018 Chevy Camaro that had been reported stolen. Turner was a drug dealer and a member of the Bloods street gang, with a long record of arrests and convictions, the police would say later.

What happened next was recounted in court Tuesday in Suffolk County, where Turner was sentenced to 27 years in prison after having pleaded guilty earlier this year to charges that included aggravated vehicular homicide.

At the courthouse Tuesday, the Suffolk district attorney, Timothy Sini, pointed out that Turner was high at the time of the accident.

“So high that the medical examiner said it was the second highest level of marijuana that they’ve ever seen in a living specimen,” Sini said.

At the moment that the Camaro struck the McCoy family’s Mazda, it was traveling at 154 mph — nearly four times the 40 mph speed limit, or roughly “the speed at which jetliners take off,” Sini said following Turner’s sentencing on Tuesday.

The collision set off a domino effect: The Camaro plowed into the Mazda, then an oil truck; the Mazda hit an Infiniti.

All four of the Mazda’s passengers — Jacquelyn McCoy, 55, who was at the wheel; her daughter, Mary Alice Booker, 36; her son, Anthony McCoy, 33; and Anthony’s girlfriend, Tameka Foster, 42 — were burned to death.

A passenger in Turner’s car, Lonidell Skinner, was thrown from the Camaro, as was Turner’s dog, a Pomeranian named Prince. Both were killed. Turner survived.

Seconds after the crash, Turner lied to the police about his name and told them he was not the driver, according to prosecutors.

About a year later, Turner pleaded guilty to a laundry list of charges relating to the five deaths and a serious injury to the driver of the oil truck. That man is still recovering from his injuries to his spine and neck, Sini said.

The sentencing Tuesday was thought to be a routine affair; no victim impact statements were scheduled, and Turner’s plea deal included a 27-year sentence. But a wrinkle quickly developed: Turner refused to leave his jail cell Tuesday morning.

Turner apparently wanted to withdraw his guilty plea, a request which Justice Fernando Camacho denied. The judge then warned that if Turner did not show up as ordered, he would risk losing his plea deal and be sentenced to life in prison.

After several hours, Turner finally came to court.

“You have an individual who, after receiving effective assistance of counsel, takes a plea, and the day of sentencing, he doesn’t have the courage to show up in court,” he said. “He’s hiding in his prison cell. It’s pathetic.”

At the sentencing, Turner spoke briefly.

“I want to say sorry to all the families,” Turner said, quietly, adding, “I lost a best friend in this situation.”

Camacho looked at Turner, who sat handcuffed in a hunter-green prison uniform. Seemingly bothered by Turner’s lack of visible empathy, Camacho spoke directly to him.

“Burned alive,” he said. “Real human beings. Burned to death. Alive! You get it?”

Eyes still locked on Turner, he added, “Jamel Turner wiped out an entire family.”

As he stood up to leave the courtroom, Turner’s eyes appeared dry.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/06/nyregion/crash-five-dead-long-island.html" id="a84d3a00-f9a0-3d62-a9ee-6065aaa67208">The New York Times</a>.

The Stolen Car Was Going 154 MPH. Five People Ended Up Dead.

CENTRAL ISLIP, N.Y. — On a short stretch of Route 25, which bisects most of Long Island, the stores and gas stations stop, and all that surrounds the road are trees from the Rocky Point Pine Barrens State Forest.

While imprisoned, he had enlisted the help of a lawyer at Pace Law School, who sued to obtain records and unearthed evidence showing Bush had not gotten a fair trial. Even after he was released from state prison on parole, Bush continued to fight to clear his name.

On Wednesday morning, 44 years after his arrest, Bush was exonerated in Suffolk County District Court in Riverhead, Long Island. The Suffolk County district attorney, Timothy D. Sini, asked a judge to throw out the conviction, saying prosecutors never told the defense the police had interviewed another possible culprit.

“I cannot give you that which was taken from you in the 1970s, but what I can restore to you today is your presumption of innocence,” Judge Anthony Senft Jr. told Bush.

Bush, now 62, wore just a hint of a smile. “I am truly humbled by this decision,” he said. He told the judge he had lived a long time in pain. “No one would listen,” he said. “No one would at least hear me out.”

Bush was only 17 years old in 1975 when he was charged with the murder of Sherese Watson, a teenager who never returned home from a house party in Bellport. She was found in a vacant lot, strangled and sexually abused. Bush was arrested four days later and signed a confession to the crime.

At trial, the jury believed the confession, though he insisted from the outset it had been coerced. Another partygoer who had testified she saw Bush leave with the victim that night recanted her testimony at a hearing five years later, saying she had never even been to the party. But it did not lead to a new trial.

In 2006, Bush wrote to Adele Bernhard, then a lawyer running a clinic at Pace Law School, from the Green Haven Correctional Facility in upstate New York. He was innocent, he said, and he hoped she would help him prove it. He had written similar letters to other lawyers.

Bernhard was interested in his case immediately, she said, after reading the statement he had signed.

“It was internally inconsistent,” she said. “The facts that they put in it, the words that they use, none of it rang true.” His statement did not match forensic evidence about how the girl had died, she said.

Bernhard discovered that the DNA underneath the victim’s fingernails did not match a sample Bush had given in prison. She also re-interviewed the witness who had recanted her testimony about seeing Bush with Watson at the party.

But a judge denied her 2008 motion to vacate the conviction, and turned down her request for additional testing on clothes and other crime-scene evidence.

Bernhard persevered. Over the next decade, she went back to key witnesses, analyzed fiber evidence, pored over the confession and did more research on the detectives involved. She also filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit to obtain records of the case.

Those records contained evidence that the police had another possible suspect for Watson’s murder — another young man at the party named John W. Jones Jr.

In a statement, Jones, who has since died, told the police he had stumbled over Watson’s body in the empty lot after leaving the party drunk, Sini said. He also said a comb found next to her body looked like one he had dropped.

Bush’s defense lawyer at the 1976 trial had never been told about Jones’ statements, a clear violation of evidence rules. In 2018, Bernhard took the records to Sini, who had just been elected on a reform platform and had established a Conviction Integrity Bureau to review such cases.

Sini, who personally appeared in court to ask the judge to vacate Bush’s conviction, said the existence of an alternative suspect should have been disclosed before trial. He said the prosecutors had engaged in a deliberate cover up.

“Mistakes happen in all aspects of our lives,” he said at a news conference. “But there was intentional misconduct here.”

Sini said his office’s nine-month review of the case confirmed several other problems with the case. The key witness who recanted her testimony was never seen at the party. And Bush’s description in his confession — that he had stabbed Watson with a Afro-pick comb before she died — did not fit the forensic evidence, because very little blood was found on her white sweater.

One of the former detectives who obtained the confession had alluded to using coercive tactics, and another had been repeatedly cited for misconduct in other cases, Sini said in a news release.

“At the end of the day, we came to some very simple conclusions,” Sini said. “We don’t believe Mr. Bush committed this murder. We believe Mr. Bush was denied a fair trial. And we believe that John Jones is a more probable suspect in this crime.”

Bush was released from prison on parole in 2007, about a month before his 50th birthday, and had to register as a sex offender, he said. He served another year in 2013 on a parole violation, for using a computer with internet access. He got a job in Connecticut as a forklift operator and is now engaged to be married.

When asked how he contains his anger, Bush said he does not.

“You don’t hold it back, you create outlets to release it,” he said. “And one of the greatest outlets is love.”

He added, “When you have the love of people that care about you, it enables you to release the pain.”

When asked whether he had ever considered giving up trying to clear his name, he answered with a straight face.

“I don’t know what that means,” he said.

This article originally appeared in <a id="8880f566-73bb-3981-a8a4-756d88d92f83" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/22/nyregion/murder-conviction-vacated-keith-bush.html">The New York Times</a>.

'No one would listen': Cleared of murder, after 33 years in prison

NEW YORK — For four decades, Keith Bush insisted he had been convicted as a teenager of a murder he did not commit: strangling a 14-year-old girl in Bellport, New York. The police, he said, had beaten him and forced him to sign a confession that he had never read.

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Arielle Dollinger

Articles written by the author

A Pit Bull Was Strangled by a Neighbor. Then Came #JusticeforRex.

The Stolen Car Was Going 154 MPH. Five People Ended Up Dead.

'No one would listen': Cleared of murder, after 33 years in prison