Defendant Sentenced in Memorial Day Killing of Yonkers Man

Thirty-two-year-old Cadman Williams was sentenced to 20 years in prison in connection with the Memorial Day 2008 killing of Yonkers resident Kenneth Sackey, Bronx District Attorney Robert Johnson announced Thursday.

Williams was convicted earlier this summer of Manslaughter in the 1st Degree (Class B Felony), to be served concurrent with seven years on his conviction for Criminal Possession of a Weapon in the 2nd Degree (Class C Felony). In addition to the 20 years, he also received a sentence of five years post-release supervision by Supreme Court Justice Dominic R. Massaro.

According to a press release issued by Johnson:

Kenneth Sackey of Yonkers was celebrating not only a new job, but the long, hot, holiday weekend, returning from a family barbecue the evening before Memorial Day to his brother’s apartment in the Bronx. But as they returned to 1749 Grand Concourse in the Mount Hope section of the borough, Sackey was loaded for bear, with an attitude and a baseball bat – and when he saw some of the kids with whom he’d had a spat the night before, he was going to show who was boss. The 42-year-old Kenneth took his bat, and with a backhanded swing, cracked it against the entryway of the building, shattering the wood and sending splinters flying out across the sidewalk.

CADMAN WILLIAMS was friendly with the kids, but he had not been at the deli with them the day before. He was not bruised by the bat, but his ego took a hit. So he hit back, drawing out his .22 caliber revolver, and squeezed off three-to-four shots – two of which hit their mark. Kenneth Sackey tried to flee through the apartment house, but video showed him falling and writhing in pain during his last minutes of life. Either bullet alone would have killed Sackey, as the one in his back struck a major vein that leads back to the heart. The bullet to the victim’s face traveled through to his spine.

Another surveillance video showed WILLIAMS moments after he walked past his dying victim, doing a little dance as he took the elevator up to his then-girlfriend’s apartment, where the firearm was eventually found hidden behind a wall.

Johnson added that the case against Williams gained some notoriety for the delays before it got to trial, resulting in an unusually long Rikers Island stay for Williams.

“He will be credited for the nearly seven years he spent at Rikers awaiting trial. The primary delay involved defense requests that admissibility of the DNA found on the murder weapon be stayed until a Brooklyn judge rendered a decision regarding that type of DNA in an unrelated case. That decision finally came late last year; the judge’s written decision was released a day after a jury found Williams guilty,” according to Johnson.

Ironically, the issue of DNA in Williams’ case “became irrelevant when the defendant testified on the stand that he, indeed, had fired the fatal shots.”

The case against Williams was prosecuted by Bronx Senior Trial Assistant D.A. George Suminski and A.D.A. Amy Schneider of Trial Bureau 20/50.

Photo: Cadman Williams. Photo credit: Bronx District Attorney’s office