Post by Scumhunter on Mar 11, 2021 0:52:14 GMT -5
(Above photo credit: nydailynews.com)
From the New York Daily News:
A Brooklyn murder suspect was released from Rikers Island in the dead of night after a clerical screwup, leaving the city Correction Department scrambling to find him and lock him up, the Daily News has learned.
Christopher Buggs, 26, had been jailed without bail while awaiting trial for more than three years when he got an unlikely reprieve Tuesday in the wake of a judge’s sentence to time served in a misdemeanor criminal contempt case, sources told The News.
Buggs has been free ever since, considered armed and so dangerous that correction officers were warned not to approach him but rather to call the NYPD, the sources said.
Late Tuesday, the NYPD released Buggs’ photo, and are asking anyone with information about his whereabouts to call Crime Stoppers at (800) 577-TIPS
The Correction Department also has teams on Buggs’ tail, sources said.
Buggs is accused of fatally shooting Ernest Brownlee, 55, outside a Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, bodega Jan. 29, 2018, as his order of pepper steak with rice and beans grew cold on a deli counter. Brownlee, an ex-con who killed two men in the 1980s, was shot three times in the chest.
Brownlee’s sister-in-law, Alita Mackins, described him in a 2018 interview with The News as devoted to his sickly wife, who uses a wheelchair.
“He was a good man. He had his problems, but he did his time,” she said. “He was out working hard, taking care of his wife, who’s ill.”
Police tracked down Buggs five days after the killing, charging him in the case.
He was released at 2 a.m. Tuesday from the Otis Bantum Correctional Center in what the Correction Department referred to as an “erroneous discharge.”
Sources said Buggs had been sentenced to 30 days of time served for a criminal contempt case, but the sentence was mistakenly listed as the final disposition of his murder case — and the jail staffers who processed the release didn’t realize the error, sources said.
“We are aware of this incident, and a full investigation into how this happened is underway,” Correction Department spokesman Peter Thorne said. “Right now we are working with our law enforcement partners to return this individual to custody.”
It’s not the first time the city Correction Department has mistakenly released a prisoner: From 2009 to 2014, correction officers and bosses cut loose 23 prisoners by mistake.
One inmate, Sidney Bannister, who was busted on charges he beat his 11-year-old boy with a belt, lived free for more than two years, unaware he was a wanted man, before authorities tracked him to a Connecticut home in December 2014.
www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc-crime/ny-murder-suspect-mistakenly-released-rikers-20210310-67z6jl2rifgvre3vqynovpxqui-story.html
Additional article on case: www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc-crime/ny-rikers-island-mistakes-blame-murder-suspect-release-20210310-cxg6jvdwbncllg62xbyuy2vnfm-story.html
Thoughts? Based on local media coverage, Buggs was still at large at least as of March 10th, 2021. Also I am placing this thread in the Fugitives on TV section because CNN's national news website is now covering the manhunt:
www.cnn.com/2021/03/10/us/christopher-buggs-release-rikers-trnd/index.html
This case is incredibly insane but not in a good way- essentially Buggs tells off a judge using crude suggestive language, gets held in contempt, and then gets released because his contempt charge was accidentally recognized as the resolution to the murder charge. He unfortunately and essentially got rewarded for telling off the judge. I really hope he can be apprehended soon and/or the general public call in the right tips to apprehend him soon because this was a pretty unforgivable mistake and egregious failure of the justice system.
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