One dead in Hempstead Village shooting

A man acquitted of a 2008 slaying was gunned down early Saturday outside a Hempstead Village strip club, Nassau police said.

Joseph L. Bolling, 23, was found fatally wounded outside the Seduccion Gentlemen's Club on Main Street at 3:11 a.m., police said.

"He was found shot in the street," said Homicide Squad Det. Sgt. Gregory Quinn, a supervisor on the case.

Detectives were considering several possible motives, including revenge or retaliation, drugs and gangs, police said.

The incident started with a fight and escalated to gunfire. The shooter or shooters fled and remain at large, police said.

Bolling was pronounced dead at Winthrop-University Hospital in Mineola about 20 minutes later, police said. He'd been inside the strip club earlier in the night.

Bolling, who lived in Hempstead but has ties to upstate Middletown, had a rap sheet including convictions for drugs and driving without a license.

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The slaying came three years to the day after Bolling was arrested upstate in the killing of Samuel "Sammy" Brown, who was shot in the chest at a backyard barbecue in Uniondale on Aug. 10, 2008. Brown would have turned 25 last week.

Police said in 2008 that the two men -- both of whom authorities said had affiliations with street gangs -- had come to blows at the barbecue before the shooting.

At Bolling's arraignment that year on a second-degree murder charge, Brown's family and friends stared each other down, with Brown's family cursing and shouting at a handcuffed Bolling.

Law enforcement sources said Bolling was later acquitted at trial.

Neither Brown's nor Bolling's family could be reached for comment.

Homicide detectives investigating Bolling's slaying Saturday had no suspects, Quinn said. They were also looking for the weapon used in the slaying.

Police asked anyone with information about the shooting to call the police department's hotline: 800-244-TIPS.

"It's the beginning of the criminal investigation," Quinn said, "and we're looking to speak to friends, family and anybody that was at the bar."

Clarification: A story on the slaying in Hempstead of Joseph L. Bolling cited Nassau police as describing the place of the shooting as the street outside the Seduccion Gentlemen's Club on Main Street. The place of occurrence was on Main Street at a street corner about 200 feet south of the club, according to additional information provided by Hempstead police.