Newburgh man accused of killing father of three from Walden
Photo credit: Leslie Barbaro | A Newburgh police SUV is shown in this file photo. (June 18, 2012)
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A Newburgh man accused of murder told a friend he shot his victim because the man insultingly "brushed away" his gun, federal prosecutors said Wednesday.
City police arrested George Squire, a 19-year-old who goes by the street name "Geo," and the man who allegedly provided him with the murder weapon, 19-year-old Quran Nichols, according to the office of U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara.
Squire and Nichols were the seventh and eighth men arrested Wednesday on charges of killing and robbing other people involved in the drug trade in the crime-plagued city of 28,000. Early Wednesday morning, cops and federal agents nabbed six men accused of murdering a 35-year-old father in 2010.
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Squire was charged with murder and robbery. Nichols was charged with drug trafficking and weapons sale.
Prosecutors said they were helped by Squire himself, who blabbed about the slaying to his friends, providing details that eventually made their way into an indictment against the accused murderer.
Squire told a friend he was waiting inside 5 City Terrace on the night of March 24, hoping to catch customers of a high-grade marijuana business that operated out of an apartment on the building's second floor.
Squire said he approached 26-year-old Tomas Almodovar of Walden, gun in hand, as Almodovar was leaving the building. Squire allegedly robbed and shot Almodovar, and told a friend he watched the victim "stumble out of the building onto Broadway before falling down from the gunshot wound," prosecutors said.
Almodovar was a father of three and worked as an electrician in New Windsor, according to The Associated Press.
Nichols provided the gun, authorities allege.
Nichols "sold the .25 caliber firearm used by Squire to kill Almodovar to another individual, believing that this other individual would use the firearm to commit a robbery. Nichols told the buyer not to lose the firearm because 'Geo' had used it in a murder," Bharara's office said in a statement.
Both Squire and Nichols were arraigned Wednesday in federal court in White Plains. Squire faces life in prison or death if convicted, while Nichols faces up to 40 years in prison.
