In the early morning hours of July 17, 2016, a resident of Queens, NY, named Qusaun Brown, aged 23, was fatally shot. The incident that led to his death began with a verbal altercation on Steinway Street. Brown and a friend made derogatory remarks toward two women who were with a group of friends, including Santiago Salcedo. This sparked a chain of events that would end in tragedy.
Following the comments, one of the women reportedly asked Salcedo if he was going to let them be
disrespected. In response, Salcedo and his male friend went to their car, retrieved an item from the trunk, and returned to confront Brown and his acquaintance. The argument escalated, and Brown ran to his own vehicle, driving it back toward Salcedo and his friend. Unarmed, Brown exited his car to continue the confrontation. It was at this point that Salcedo took a gun from his friend and fired at Brown five times, striking him once in the neck. Brown was rushed to a nearby hospital, where he died from his injuries two days later.
The investigation into the shooting led to the identification and arrest of Santiago Salcedo, a 27-year-old from Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. In December 2019, after a five-week trial, a jury found Salcedo guilty of manslaughter in the first degree, attempted assault in the first degree, and two counts of criminal possession of a weapon in the second degree.
In February 2020, Santiago Salcedo was sentenced for his role in Qusaun Brown's death. He received a sentence of 20 years in prison for the manslaughter charge, with an additional five years for the attempted assault charge, to be followed by five years of post-release supervision. The presiding Queens Supreme Court Justice, Ronald Hollie, handed down the sentence. Acting Queens District Attorney John Ryan described the killing as a 'ridiculous act of violence' that stemmed from 'foolish words,' emphasizing that resorting to a gun is never the solution to a dispute.
