Mom to witnesses: Please help

Sondra Chambers never thought she'd feel that sorrow that only a mother who carried a son for nine months and raised him to be a man could feel.

This week, as she made funeral plans for her eldest son, Andre Chambers, 23, of Roosevelt, Sondra Chambers said she was frustrated that police have not yet caught the person who shot her son in the head early Saturday, leaving him dead on the basement floor of a Hempstead home where dozens of revelers were dancing.

As she received mourners, helped arrange the funeral and edited her son's obituary, Chambers paused to plead to the people who rushed out of 38 Linden Pl. in a panic, but didn't tell police what they saw and heard.

"Out of 50 people, somebody had to be standing next to Andre, and somebody was standing next to the guy who pulled the trigger," she said. "Please! He had a wife and a 2-year-old son. My son had his whole life ahead of him. He will never see his son graduate from high school. This 'no-snitching' thing is ridiculous and it has got to stop."

Homicide detectives said the fact that witnesses are reluctant, out of fear of retaliation, is hampering the investigation.

The problem is bad enough to warrant federal attention.

Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) cited Andre Chambers' case and that of Jerome Hamilton, 17, of Wyandanch - whose case was profiled on Newsday's Long Island Life cover a few weeks ago - as examples of why prosecutors in Nassau and Suffolk need help protecting witnesses to violent crimes.

"Witnesses who are willing to stand up in court and testify about a violent crime in their community are extraordinarily courageous," he said in pushing the Short Term Witness Protection Act, which would make the federal government responsible for paying for witness protection in major violent crime court cases in high-crime areas. It is part of the Gang Abatement and Prevention Act of 2007. "The least we can do is protect them from criminals who want to silence them."

Schumer's bill would give Nassau alone about $500,000 for witness protection.

"This funding will aid both the police department and the district attorney to provide for their protection," Nassau Police Commissioner Lawrence W. Mulvey said.

Chambers said that while her son had some brushes with the law, serving short stints for crimes ranging from unlicensed motor vehicle operation to drug possession, his killer could not have known the man she knew.

"He did not deserve to die that way," she said of her son, who was born in Westbury and had lived in Huntington, graduating from Huntington High School.

"Anybody that knew him, loved him."

Chambers said her son had carpentry skills, and had apprenticed under his uncle while living in Alabama.

Chambers and his wife, Sofayla Boone-Chambers, 21, and son, Andre Cameron Chambers, came back to Long Island a year ago after living in Alabama for 18 months.

Since then, he worked among the smell of sawdust and the buzz of a power saw, as he tackled renovation projects at his grandmother's rental properties.

"He wanted to continue to do carpentry and raise his son," Chambers said.

"That's what he wanted."

Viewing will take place tomorrow from 5 to 9 p.m. at St. John's Baptist Church in Westbury. The funeral will be held Friday at 11 a.m. at the church.

Burial will follow in Pinelawn Memorial Park in Pinelawn.