One of many 5 males convicted within the 2022 drugging and theft of patrons at homosexual bars in Manhattan was slapped with eight years in jail on Thursday.
Manhattan Supreme Court docket Justice Felicia Mennin handed down the sentence to Andre Butts, 30, who beforehand pleaded responsible to 2 counts of theft and a conspiracy cost for his function within the incidents that despatched shockwaves via New York Metropolis’s LGBTQ group. Butts and one other man, Shane Hoskins, 32, on Jan. 7 copped to their roles within the chilling string of robberies.
A jury convicted three different males, Jayqwan Hamilton, 37, Robert DeMaio, 36, and Jacob Barroso, 32, of 24 counts, together with homicide, theft, housebreaking and conspiracy, on Feb. 10, stemming from the murders of 33-year-old John Umberger and 25-year-old Julio Ramirez. Hamilton and DeMaio had been accused of luring each males to their deaths, with Barroso accused of taking part in Ramirez’s homicide.
Andre Butts is sentenced in Manhattan Supreme Court docket on Thursday. (Barry Williams / New York Day by day Information)
“Andre Butts is now facing accountability for his role in this deadly and callous conspiracy,” Manhattan District Legal professional Alvin Bragg stated in an announcement Thursday. “He admitted to participating in multiple robberies using fentanyl-laced drugs to incapacitate victims, so he and his co-defendants could drain money from their financial accounts.
“While it is fortunate that the victims targeted by Mr. Butts survived, I know they are still suffering from the trauma of this incident and hope they can continue to heal.”
Manhattan District Legal professional Alvin Bragg. (Theodore Parisienne for New York Day by day Information)
Members of the predatory theft crew had been arrested and indicted in 2022 and 2023 after investigators found a hyperlink between the druggings and robberies. They had been accused of singling out patrons at Manhattan homosexual bars and befriending them, then providing them cigarettes and medicines laced with fentanyl to render them unconscious earlier than absconding with hundreds of {dollars}.
Butts joined Hamilton and DeMaio in concentrating on a person outdoors The Q, a homosexual nightclub in Hell’s Kitchen, on March 18, 2022. They then headed again to the sufferer’s Union Sq. lodge, the place they plied him with fentanyl-laced medication, earlier than loading his physique onto a baggage cart, in keeping with courtroom information.
When the sufferer awakened, he realized his telephone was gone — monitoring it to Brooklyn — and that transactions had been charged to his Apple Money and Money App accounts.
Jacob Barroso, 30, was one in all a half-dozen reputed gang members indicted by a Manhattan grand jury on March 23 with homicide, theft, grand larceny and conspiracy within the killings of John Umberger and Julio Ramirez. (NYPD)
Weeks later, on April 8, Butts, Hamilton, Barroso and Hoskins focused one other sufferer on the identical nightclub, additionally going again to his house and feeding him a cocktail of fentanyl-laced narcotics, in keeping with charging papers. The sufferer in that incident woke as much as discover his telephone and bank cards stolen and found fraudulent prices made at a Prada retailer and Bloomingdale’s.
Hamilton, who prosecutors stated was the crew’s ringleader, DeMaio and Barroso set their sights on Ramirez, a Brooklyn social employee, outdoors The Ritz Bar in Hell’s Kitchen on April 21. They drugged him on the bar and lounge with fentanyl and in the end left him unconscious behind a cab, robbing hundreds of {dollars} from his on-line accounts and spending it on sneakers and clothes, in keeping with trial proof.
Julio Ramirez (left) and John Umberger. Umberger and Ramirez had been killed because the defendants hunted for doubtless targets between March 2021 and July 2022, officers stated, with the perpetrators stealing cellphones, bank cards and different gadgets from their helpless victims.
Ramirez was transported to a hospital and was declared useless lower than two hours later.
Nearly a month later, on Might 28, DeMaio and Hamilton focused Umberger at The Q, going again to an Higher East Facet house the place Umberger was staying and leaving him incapacitated after loading him up with fentanyl-laced medication, jurors heard at trial. They stole $2,000 from his financial institution accounts.
Umberger, a political guide and Washington, D.C., resident, was discovered useless on the location 4 days later.
Hamilton, DeMaio and Barroso are set to be sentenced in Might. Hoskins is anticipated to be sentenced to an agreed-upon time period of eight years in jail subsequent month.
Initially Revealed: March 20, 2025 at 12:52 PM EDT
