GUILTY NY - Raymond Patterson, 14, dead, 3 injured in Buffalo shooting, 12 Aug 2014

A Buffalo man has been indicted in the fatal shooting of a 14-year-old boy and the wounding of three other youths last week while he was refereeing a fight between two girls at the Kenfield-Langfield public housing complex on Buffalo’s East Side and got into a fight.

Joseph P. Gant, 28, who was arrested last week on one count of second-degree murder and three counts of first-degree assault...

Raymond Floyd Patterson III, 14, was killed on a footbridge over the Kensington Expressway linking the housing complex to Roosevelt Park as he tried to flee. Patterson and the three wounded youths were all bystanders, police said.

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“The parents were egging on the girls to fight it out,” a police source said.

Neighbors who witnessed the fight from their apartments said a crowd of 30 to 40 young people formed around the two combatants; curious motorists pulled over to watch...

Just before the gunfire, a man, perhaps between 20 and 30 years old, had tried to keep others from crossing the footbridge into the parking lot to watch the fight, according to authorities. When one of the spectators objected, a fight started between them and the man trying to limit spectators pulled out a gun and shot at the crowd indiscriminately, authorities said.

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Fourteen-year-old Dae’Mone Patterson took the stand Tuesday in the murder trial of Joseph P. Gant and told the courtroom about the day last summer when he, his brother Ray and some friends were playing basketball at Roosevelt Park and heard a commotion across a pedestrian walkway over the Kensington Expressway.

As they headed along the bridge, Dae’Mone said, a number of people came running the other way. They heard what sounded like gunshots, and Dae’Mone said his brother panicked. He tried to catch up as his brother ran ahead of him.

“I saw him when he got shot and fell to the floor,” the teen said. “I crouched down and grabbed him. I sat there for a few seconds, and he told me to go get Mom.”

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The Buffalo man convicted of killing one teenager and wounding three others in a shooting last year will spend the next three decades behind bars. Joseph Gant was sentenced to 35 years to life for the shooting death of 14-year old Raymond Patterson.

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