The accused teen shooter in the fatal mugging of an actress on the Lower East Side is fit to stand trial for murder and only pretending to be crazy, a judge has ruled.
The decision, by Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Daniel Fitzgerald, came despite – or perhaps partly because of – the teen’s claims that he was so nuts, he’d been visited in jail by a “giant marshmallow man.”
The teen, Rudy Fleming, can now be tried as early as June for last year’s senseless Clinton Street shooting of actress Nicole duFresne, 28, who’d asked the alleged gunman, “You got what you wanted – what are you going to do now, shoot us?”
Prosecutors say Fleming, one in a group of six teens, answered by firing a single bullet into the woman’s chest. Her three companions – who’d been enjoying a night of club-hopping – watched in horror.
As the pack of muggers fled, duFresne died in the arms of her fiancé, Jeffrey Sparks – who yesterday praised the judge’s assessment that the accused triggerman is “malingering.”
“I hope he gets life in prison,” said Sparks, 35, a musician and playwright. “I don’t think any of us want to think about him ever getting out.”
But Fleming’s lawyer, Anthony Ricco, insisted that his client is no malingerer. “If Rudy Flemning is faking, then he needs to get a job in Hollywood,” the lawyer said.
laura.italiano@nypost.com