Brooklyn, NY – Relatives of a Chasidic man who was brutally kidnapped and murdered are outraged by the lenient sentence handed down today to one of four conspirators charged in his death.
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Kendall Felix was sentenced to two and a third to seven years in the 2014 killing of Menachem Stark. According to the Brooklyn Eagle (http://bit.ly/2TDo5wf), Judge Danny Chun said that he awarded the relatively light sentence to Felix because of his age at the time of the crime, his college degree and the fact that he was not the mastermind of the plot to kidnap the 39 year old father of seven.
As previously reported on VIN News (http://bit.ly/2TzYrbW), Felix had been facing a maximum sentence of 25 years. Also charged in Stark’s killing were Kendel Felix, Erskin Felix and Irvine Henry, all Brooklyn residents.
Stark’s murder was a kidnapping gone wrong, with conspirators depositing his lifeless body in Great Neck dumpster on a snowy Friday night. Stark’s sister in law Leah Weiss said that Kendall Felix admitted that he set the body on fire in an attempt to dispose of the remains and that the family was very disturbed by court’s determination that burning Stark’s body was considered to be tampering with evidence.
“This is desecration of a body; this is not evidence,” Weiss told VIN News. “Where is the husband, the father, the son, where is he? This is not evidence of a crime, he was a person.”
Weiss said that Stark was an integral part of the family, whose presence is still sorely missed.
“Most people don’t understand that we aren’t the kind of family who only gets together when someone gets married or makes a bar mitzvah,” said Weiss. “We were together all the time and he was always at the center of everything.”
Judge Chun’s sentence opens up a world of hurt for the Stark family all over again, noted Weiss.
“He was the one who came up with the idea to burn the body and the not knowing where he was an extremely painful part of the process and that was his doing,” said Weiss.
Tziri Hershkowitz, another of Stark’s sisters in law, was in the courtroom nearly every day of Felix’s trial. She too felt that Chun’s sentence missed the mark.
“This is unfairly short for such a horrendous and cold blooded crime,” observed Hershkowitz. “He admitted to being solely responsible for burning a man’s body and the family deserved better than this. A human being is not the same as a bag of evidence.”
Stark’s son will be getting married next week and Hershkowitz said that the family has been doing its best to juggle the joy of the upcoming wedding with the emotional difficulties of the trial.
“Sitting there in court every day is traumatic and we have heard a lot more detail about the tragedy than we necessarily needed to hear,” said Hershkowitz. “The images and video are heartbreaking and horrifying but we need to them to know that we are there and that we are a loving family that has been forever changed.”
Felix’s lawyer, Kenneth Montgomery, was not immediately available to comment on the matter.
another travesty of justice,
we are living in Sidom !
Time to get out while we still can
Yep this is the great USA were justice is supposedly served!
Kill a person you get off almost free.
Samet 27 years now into the 19th year.
Rubashkin 27 years luckily is free.
Getting accused of molestation 50 years. ( now start all screaming that a “he say she say” case belongs in prison for FIFTY years).
And we still call this the best justice system in the world!
The light sentence seems to be because they only kidnapped and brutally murdered a religious Jew; had they stole money from Amazon or Google they might have gotten 30 years to life….
we stand by silently for far too many anti semitic acts thrown upon us. we must protest this sentence.
we live in a world where BLM and nothing else
#2 , Excellent point.
Oh but Manafort yes he is far more dirter. he desreves to rot in prison? right??
hey yakov doe, what do you think of our wonderful justice system. That Smollet guy totally scott free. This animal 3 years. But Trump’s associates lime Manafort oh 10 years. OJ simpson free. Leimerick nelson yimach shimo free. Jewish blood is cheap.
Phineas, you were always a fan of the law? huh? We live in a wacky crazy country.
Purely antisemitic. What does his college degree count for if he’s a murderer?
and DA Gonzalez who makes these deals with this chung guy is to blame, but remember he is our “friend”. in addition Satmar is so quick to say they are friendlty with all the politicians and so quick to denounce Israel are the 1st to get anti-Semitism.
What a shame!
They should appeal.
Hashem Yinokem Dumo
The Judge said why he gave the light sentence: because he had a college degree
how long did the “Master Mind” get
The judge is an evil guy, to say on a person who is in his 20s and he get a light sentence because he has a clean record, as if killing a person is not enough
the new age term for blacks that can get away with anything is “criminal while black”. if this offends anybody let them find an alternative explanation for Smollet and this piece of …. felix.
This is why the Democrats who run NY on all levels need to be voted OUT !
Then maybe the new office holders will do something to protect the innocent and to bring to justice the guilty.
Don’t worry, G-d sees all.
If this crime had occurred in Dallas, all of the perpetrators would be facing either life, or the death penalty. I remember an NYPD Detective telling me of a case years ago, whereby an elderly man was also brutally murdered by some young thugs. The jury, which was had minority members (the defendant was a minority), refused to convict the defendants. Their “logic”, was that the victim was elderly, and he would not have lived that long, anyway. Hence, they didn’t want to imprison the young hoodlums. This is the same “logic”, being employed by this idiotic judge. I guess that we should be grateful that the judge didn’t sentence that savage to community service.
With few exceptions, the justice systems in America go easier on violent crime than they do on white collar crime. And logic is not on their side either. Just picture the criminal who commits all sorts of white collar crime. If free and properly monitored and supervised, he could actually earn something to compensate his victims. The violent criminal cannot be supervised that way, and the quick release just places society at risk all over again. I’m not looking to dismiss the severity of violent crime, but the balance is completely lopsided and defies logic.
This judge is unfit for the job.
Same judge that got slapped in the face many times by the higher courts.
How much you all want to bet that these slow lives will be in the news for committing a violent crime in the not too distant future. Maybe it will be on a police officer. Wonder what this idiot judge will say then?!
How can we protest this drekishe judge’s drekishe sentence.
A strange case and a strange sentence.
Oh he had a college degree. I had no idea. Set him free.