Tiarah Shanice Poyau, a 22-year-old St. John's University student, was fatally shot in the early morning hours of September 5, 2016. The incident occurred during the annual J'Ouvert festival in Brooklyn, New York, a pre-dawn celebration that precedes the West Indian Day Parade. Poyau was with three friends when a man, later identified as 20-year-old Reginald Moise, began grinding on her.
When she told him to 'get off' her, he shot her in the face at close range.
Four hours after the shooting, police arrested Moise for driving while intoxicated after he crashed into three cars. Investigators connected him to Poyau's death after he told friends he thought he had shot someone. Police found the 9mm handgun used in the shooting at his girlfriend's apartment, where Moise had fired two shots into a wall, injuring his hand. Ballistic evidence from the apartment matched a casing found at the scene of Poyau's death. Moise was subsequently charged with second-degree murder, criminal possession of a weapon, and reckless endangerment.
During his trial, Moise's defense attorneys argued that he was so intoxicated that he did not know the gun was loaded and could not remember shooting anyone. In court, Poyau's mother, Vertina Brown, expressed her profound grief and anger, at one point telling Moise to 'kill yourself.' Moise was ultimately acquitted of the murder charge but convicted of criminally negligent homicide and criminal possession of a weapon.
The judge sentenced Moise to 17 1/3 years in prison, the maximum allowable for the charges on which he was convicted, with the sentences to run consecutively. In his sentencing remarks, the judge called Moise's actions an 'act of idiocy' that 'destroyed the incredibly bright future of a promising young woman.' Poyau was remembered as a 'stellar person' who was pursuing a master's degree and was about to start a new job as an accountant.
