NEW YORK – A mother and son will spend more than two decades in prison after being sentenced for the murder of a Queens man over a $350 debt for missing repairs to a vehicle.
The events for which Avita Campbell, 40, and Raymond Jackson, 25, were convicted this Thursday, were reported in September 2020.
Campbell and Jackson, both residents of Valley Stream, Long Island, pleaded guilty last month to first-degree murder and criminal possession of a weapon.
The duo shot and killed Lasaaun Lawrence, 27, in the Far Rockaway neighborhood.
Jackson, identified as the gunman, will serve 24 years in prison; while his mother must spend 22 years behind bars.
“A dispute over a small sum of money ended with a young man being senselessly executed,” Queens district attorney Melinda Katz said in written statements.
“His killers will spend a long time in prison for their cold-blooded cruelty,” added the prosecutor.
According to the evidence presented in court, Lawrence went to the home that the mother and son shared, on September 23, 2020, to ask for back the $350 that they supposedly owed him for a car repair that Jackson did not complete.
The men got into a fight. Shortly before 6 pm the same day, the convicts were caught on security cameras getting out of a white BMW car on Beach 31st Street with the younger man carrying a handgun and the woman carrying a metal pipe.
The duo approached Lawrence as he was sitting in a parked car and Jackson shot him at least 12 times. Campbell then struck the windshield of the victim’s vehicle with the tube. They then returned to the BMW and fled the scene.
A week later, the attackers were stopped by the Police when they were driving the same car. Campbell’s license was suspended. The intervention led to the arrest of both.
Agents recovered the Smith & Wesson 9mm pistol with which the homicide was committed. However, those responsible were temporarily released until their link to the crime was confirmed.
Jackson, who subsequently fled the country, was captured in December 2020 and extradited to NYC.