A teenaged Brooklyn gang-banger was found guilty Monday in the shooting death of an innocent bystander on a Brooklyn bus in 2014.
Kahton Anderson’s head slumped into his hands as the Brooklyn Supreme Court jury forewoman said he’d been found guilty of second-degree murder.
Anderson, 16, a member of the Stacked Money Goons street gang, was just 14 when the B15 bus he was on was surrounded by members of rival gang Twan Fam in Clinton Hill. He pulled out a gun and fired at his rivals, killing family man Angel Rojas in the crossfire.
Anderson held back tears as his mom sobbed in the pews when the jury announced its verdict: guilty of second-degree murder, second-degree attempted murder, first-degree attempted assault, first-degree reckless endangerment and of first-degree criminal possession of a weapon.
Even some jurors began to tear up, one wiping her eyes as Justice Dineen Riviezzo thanked them for their service.
“Angel Rojas was an innocent and hard-working man who came to our country to pursue the American Dream,” Brooklyn District Attorney Ken Thompson, who was in court for the verdict, later said in a statement. “All of that was tragically and brutally taken away from him in an instant by a teenager caught up in the gang culture.”
“Who did I hit? Was it a rival or an innocent?” Anderson bemoaned to cops after his arrest. “Man, why didn’t I go home? Why did I do it? Why didn’t I just f—ing go home? They came at me on the bus and I was scared.”
Anderson was found guilty on the lesser charge of reckless endangerment for emptying his clip at rivals outside the bus in his May 2015 trial. Yet that jury, which deliberated for 10 days, was hung on the murder charge.
He faces up to 15 years to life in prison when he’s sentenced on Feb. 18.
“We’re disappointed,” defense attorney Frederic Pratt told reporters as he left court. “It was a tough case…sad, tragic. That’s all.”