[Lady Sidhe]

Self defense claimed in sword attack

By Pete Bowles
Staff Writer

June 14, 2004, 5:35 PM EDT

A Maspeth teen accused of hacking to death another teenager with a Samurai sword acted in self defense after the friend pointed a BB gun at him, according to a statement the teen gave to police.

"He pointed a gun at my head," the suspect, Michael Desiderio, 18, told a detective after his arrest in the slaying of Ricardo Richardson, also 18, in Richardson's home about 10 a.m. Sunday.

"I left the room," Desiderio said in the statement. "Then I went to get my sword and kept hitting him with the sword. He fell down. I put the sword in my closet in the basement of my home."

The statement Desiderio made to police was presented Monday at his arraignment in Queens County Criminal Court on charges of second-degree murder and criminal possession of a weapon.

Judge Lenora Gerald ordered him held in jail in lieu of bail and scheduled a court hearing for June 28.

Desiderio faces up to 25 years to life in prison if convicted.

Desiderio's attorney, Robert Gottlieb, argued that police had prevented his client from seeing two attorneys who went to a police precinct to assist him and that, as a result, he would seek to have the statement barred from trial.

Desiderio, who Gottlieb said has been working in a law office on Long Island for several months, was arrested at his grandfather's house at 54-43 66th St., where he had been living while his mother was moving into a new cooperative in Glen Oaks. His father lives in Arizona.

According to police, Desiderio killed Richardson with the sword in a two-story house on Maspeth Avenue which had become a hangout for local teenagers. Richardson, who moved to New York from Trinidad a few months ago, had been living in the house and had become a close friend to Desiderio.

Assistant District Attorney Natalie Bell told the court that Desiderio fled to his grandfather's house after the incident. "He left a man bleeding to death," she said.

Bell said Desiderio told the police were to find the bloody sword and admitted that he committed the gruesome crime. "I killed the guy," she quoted Desiderio as telling police. "The knife is wrapped up inside my bloody pants in the house."

Gottlieb said his client, who has a G.E.D. certificate, has never been convicted of a crime. His mother works as a school aide and his father owns his own business, the attorney said.



Uh-huh. I don't know about you, but bringing a sword to a gunfight is the way to go, I always say....

If someone were pointing a gun at my head, I wouldn't run to get a sword, then come BACK....I'd run and keep on going, then call the police. And it was a BB gun, for God's sake...since when is a shot from a BB gun fatal??

So we have someone who's admitted to murder, and I can't believe that he was in fear for his life from a BB gun. And if he WAS in fear for his life, why'd he run away, then go BACK??

It doesn't wash.


Sidhe