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How separate lives collided in a deadly shooting

BY ROCCO PARASCANDOLA | rocco.parascandola@newsday.com

March 19, 2007

About two hours into their shift on the night of Nov. 24, a lieutenant, six detectives and an officer assigned to look for criminal activity in city nightclubs sat down for a tactical meeting at a precinct in lower Manhattan.

Their topic at that 11:30 p.m. sit-down: Kalua Cabaret, a strip club 13 miles away in Jamaica, Queens.

At about the same time, Sean Bell and his friends were setting their sights on the Kalua, but for an entirely different reason. Bell, 23, was less than a day from marrying the mother of his two children, and one last night of bachelorhood awaited.

Less than five hours later, the two groups would cross paths. The result was deadly.

City bars and nightclubs had been making headlines for some time, for all the wrong reasons. Violence linked to rappers. Drunken club kids passing out on the streets of Chelsea. Most notably, two women - Imette Saint-Guillen, a student at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, and Jennifer Moore, a New Jersey resident - were murdered after a night of partying.

Club crackdown

In response, the NYPD formed the Club Enforcement Initiative and charged it with cracking down on hot spots where drugs, prostitution or violence were commonplace.

The Kalua Cabaret was one such spot. It had been shut by the city in July 2004 for serving alcohol to minors, authorities say, but was allowed to reopen about two months later after several conditions were met. A year ago, in March 2006, vice officers raided the club and made a gun arrest and a drug arrest, authorities said. Then, on Nov. 21, two women were busted at the club for prostitution, authorities say.

When police showed up at Kalua on Nov. 25, it was 12:45 a.m., the early morning of Bell's wedding day.

According to an internal police report, as well as statements by police officials and interviews with sources, the rest of the night unfolded in this way:

At 1 a.m., detectives Gescard Isnora and Marc Cooper, plus a third undercover detective, stepped out of their unmarked vehicles and entered the club, leaving their guns and shields behind because of the Kalua's security screens for weapons.

Isnora was the lead operative, with the other two backing him up. They chatted up several female dancers, but "could not establish probable cause for a prostitution arrest," according to the internal police report.

There were, however, a number of minor disputes between dancers and patrons, something the backup team was apprised of whenever one of the undercovers used a cell phone to call Lt. Gary Napoli, the supervisor that night, as he sat in a Camry in a parking lot across the street.

At about 3:30 a.m., there appeared to be some action. The third undercover lost sight of Isnora and Cooper. Thinking they were outside, he left the club to look for them. Isnora was, in fact, outside, and he told the third undercover that he had heard a man who had been inside the club - noticeable by his Chicago White Sox cap - tell a dancer that he would take care of matters if she had a problem, then gesture to his waistband to suggest he was armed.

Isnora already had relayed this information to Napoli and had retrieved his gun and shield from a green Mitsubishi, one of the other unmarked vehicles holding some of the backup crew. Cooper also had checked in with Napoli, retreating to the Camry to get his shield and gun and staying there.

The third undercover, the only one of the three police clubgoers still unarmed, went back inside to look for the man in the White Sox cap. That man was nowhere to be found, and the threat of a confrontation seemed to be over.

But when the third undercover left the club, he saw Isnora standing in front, near a group of eight men. Among them was Bell and a friend, Joseph Guzman, 31, and they were arguing with another man who had his right hand in his jacket pocket as if he had a gun, the internal report said.

"Let's -- him up," Bell is alleged to have said, with Guzman saying, "Yo, get my gun."

There was more posturing and more angry words, then Bell, Guzman and their friends walked off toward Liverpool Street, splitting into two groups.

'I think there's a gun'

At that point, Isnora, talking with Napoli on a cell phone, followed the group that included Bell, Guzman and Trent Benefield, 23. Isnora, according to the report, told Napoli it was "getting hot on Liverpool.

"I think there's a gun," he said.

Napoli, over his police radio, instructed the rest of the backup team to move in.

The third undercover, meanwhile, was away from the action - one of several tactical failures that night - chatting up a woman in the hope of making a prostitution arrest, several police sources said.

Bell, Guzman and Benefield got into Bell's Nissan Altima, parked on Liverpool Street. Isnora crossed into the street and approached the Altima, and as Bell drove off, his car bumped Isnora's legs and then rammed an unmarked van in which Det. Michael Oliver and Officer Mike Carey were riding. Bell put the Altima into reverse, mounting a sidewalk and hitting the lowered gate of a building before again going forward and striking the van a second time.

It isn't entirely clear exactly when the first bullet was fired, but once Isnora fired one shot, other cops joined in, with 50 shots fired in all - 11 total by Isnora, 31 by Oliver, four by Cooper, three by Carey and one by Det. Paul Headley.

Bell was killed and Benefield and Guzman, both shot multiple times, were seriously wounded.

The sequence of those fateful moments remains unclear, and a key issue - whether Isnora ever identified himself as a police officer - has been hotly debated.

Sources familiar with Isnora's account say he did identify himself as a cop. Benefield and Guzman, meanwhile, say they thought they were being carjacked. They also say no gun was found because none of the three men had one that night.