Two 15-year-old Brooklyn boys pleaded not guilty yesterday to beating a homeless man to death with 40 bricks outside a church – as the neighborhood tried to make sense of the brutal murder.
Jamel Robinson and Dashorn Washington were charged in Brooklyn Criminal Court with two counts of second-degree murder and weapon possession in the death of Billy Pearson.
The youngsters held their heads low and barely reacted as the prosecutor described the horrific details of the crime in which the pair allegedly pummeled Pearson to death with bricks.
They left him in a pool of blood outside a soup kitchen run by St. John’s Bread and Live at St. Gabriel’s Catholic Church on Linwood Street in East New York, the prosecutor said.
At the soup kitchen, a nun who’s a director of the program said she helped Pearson, 51, deal with his drug-abuse and mental-health problems for years.
“All kinds of people liked Billy. There was something very special about him,” said Sister Madeline Kavanagh.
“He was a guy who had a quiet inner dignity, even when he was drunk.”
Vernon McClam, an outreach worker for the soup kitchen, said Pearson was “like the mayor of East New York.”
“Everybody loved him, you couldn’t help but love him,” she said.
McClam said Pearson had slid further into indigence and drunkenness after his mother died a few years ago.
The church, which supported Pearson for so long, will hold funeral services for him on Monday at noon, following a 10:30 a.m. wake at St. John’s Funeral Home on Liberty Avenue.
Mayor Bloomberg called Pearson’s killing senseless.
“It’s a disgrace,” he said. “I don’t know. It defies … I mean, you get up in the morning and you shake your head. How two 15-year-olds can go and kill somebody on a lark, I don’t know what you can say about it.”
Meanwhile Jamel’s foster mother, Mary Flowers, 68, said he was a good kid but often a “follower.”
“He had a few problems in school, I guess getting mixed up with other kids,” said Flowers.
Her daughter, Jacqueline, said she was with Jamel when the cops questioned him – and Jamel is claiming that the homeless man attacked the boys first.
“He said when Billy picked up a bottle and threw it at them, it hit Dashorn in the lip and Dashorn just went crazy,” Jacqueline said.
She said he told cops, “I didn’t touch him, I didn’t push him, I didn’t kick him. I was trying to stop [Dashorn.] Dashorn’s mother, Geraldine Washington, said her son suffers from attention deficit syndrome and bipolar disorder, and blamed his recent problems on his friendship with a neighbor she described as a drug dealer.
“She’s the reason that this happened,” she said. “How could somebody do this to my son? This is like a nightmare.”
The neighbor, who acknowledged knowing Dashorn, said, “He wanted love, he wanted to be loved, and he still needs love.”
Additional reporting by David Seifman