Twelve years after the senseless shooting death of her Navy-bound Bronx teenage son, Luz DeJesus was finally starting to come to terms with her grief — until the ex-con who killed him was freed from prison only to be arrested for a new slay.
“The justice system does not seem to work,” DeJesus, 49, told the Daily News. “These past few years our family has been through so much pain.”
Deshaun Coleman gunned down DeJesus’ son in 2012 but was ultimately convicted only of weapon possession. Coleman’s lawyers convinced a jury the suspect was defending himself when he shot Victor Maldonado on a Bronx street and so he beat murder and manslaughter charges.
Coleman, now 46 and back on the street for a little over a year, was arrested last month and charged with shooting to death a longtime friend of DeJesus’ daughter just two blocks from where her son was slain.
Coleman had been released on parole in DeJesus’ son’s case in January 2023.
“When somebody says, ‘Oh, my name is Deshaun,’ or even with the last name Coleman, it just drives me nuts,” DeJesus said.
Cops nabbed Coleman six days after Hasan Richburg, 26, was gunned down Feb. 8
“He killed that other young man and got away with it,” Richburg’s brother, Harry James Richburg, 45, told the Daily News. “People in the neighborhood was scared of him because of that.”
Last month’s slaying rocked DeJesus’ family too. DeJesus’ daughter was longtime friends with the new victim.
“They grew up together,” DeJesus said. “She said, ‘Oh Mom, you know a friend of mine was killed right there in Kingsbridge. And he had daughters, he had a family.’”
Then came news of the arrest.
“When I told my daughter, she’s like, “Oh my God, it’s the same guy,'” DeJesus said. “And that’s when it hit us.”
DeJesus’ 19-year-old son was a week away from taking his physical to enlist in the Navy when he was shot in the torso on Heath Ave. near W. Kingsbridge Road on Oct. 1, 2012.
DeJesus told reporters at the time she couldn’t understand how ex-con Coleman was free given his lengthy criminal history. “He should’ve never been able to be on the street,” she told a DNAinfo reporter the week of her son’s death.
Coleman had 19 previous arrests before Richburg’s death on charges including robbery and possession of a controlled substance, police said. He went to prison in 2007 for a Bronx robbery conviction and was released three-and-a-half years later.
He was sentenced to up to 12 years in prison for weapon possession in Maldonado’s death. DeJesus says if Coleman had been convicted of murder in her son’s death her daughter’s friend would be alive today.
Maldonado, who planned on enlisting in the Navy after his sister’s upcoming birthday, got embroiled in an argument two girls were having and tried to act as a peacemaker, his family said.
The girls were quarreling because Coleman’s sister had walked into a building on Heath Ave. and failed to say thank you to the other girl, who had been holding the door for her. During the clash Coleman’s sister called her brother, according to court records.
Coleman claimed to cops his sister was being blocked from entering the building and that during a scuffle he took the weapon from Maldonado and then it “just went off.”
“I grabbed his belt loop and realized he had a gun.” Coleman told authorities, according to court documents.
“I reached for it and took it away from him. Then I shot at him. I wasn’t aiming at him. It just went off. Yeah I shot the gun after he had let go. I don’t know what happened to the kid. I went over to the other guy still holding the gun and said, “Is it over now?” Then I went in the apartment. I never called 911.”
But his own sister told authorities Coleman had arrived with the gun and she had pleaded with him not to shoot Maldonado.
“They started arguing. And that’s when I got in the middle because he got this gun and I was like stop!,” Theresa Coleman told investigators, according to court papers. “I didn’t want none of this to happen.”
Javier Solano, Coleman’s lawyer at the time, said he feels bad for Maldonado’s mother but believes the jury got it right.
“Ultimately, the jury believed us and came to the conclusion that prosecutors could not disprove self defense,” Solano said. “That was his defense all along. He was just thankful that the jury felt the same way.”
DeJesus still isn’t buying it.
“Without fail for the past 11 years we go every year to the spot where it happened,” she said. “We light candles every single year. Whether it’s rain, whether it’s cold, it doesn’t matter.”
Now the Richburg family is feeling a similar agony.
“My son is taking it really hard because Hasan is the one who taught him how to swim,” said RIchburg’s sister Madalene Richburg, 34. “(Hasan) was very chill, calm. Quiet but silly. Always making jokes.”
A neighbor said Richburg was one of three brothers who were raised by an aunt after both of their parents died.
“I have a lot of empathy for them,” the neighbor, who gave his name only as Manuel, said. “I feel bad for them. I want to cry.”
He described Richburg as a “tall handsome man” who “didn’t know his potential.”
Richburg was released on parole from prison in 2019, records show, after serving two years on Bronx convictions for weapon and drug possession along with criminal mischief.
“This kid that came out, he was trying to get his life straight,” said Manuel. “I can tell you that.”
Richburg was currently working as a lab technician and had six kids.
At Richburg’s funeral service at Riverdale Funeral Home in Manhattan on Feb. 25, Harry James Richburg said his brother was targeted by Coleman.
“Word on the street is that some girl that (Coleman) was dating, she was attracted to my brother,” he said, adding that the shooting was motivated by “jealousy” and “animosity.”
RIchburg was shot multiple times in the torso in an apartment building on W. Kingsbridge Road near Webb Ave. He managed to make it part way down the block and was found outside Kennedy Fried Chicken & Pizza, about three blocks from his home. He died at St. Barnabas Hospital.
Ring doorbell video of the slaying seen by the Daily News shows Hasan Richburg sitting on steps inside the building as the sound of a gun cocks. A moment later the killer emerges, aiming a gun at Richburg and ordering him to his feet. Richburg raises his arms briefly before fleeing off camera and the gunman fires off several shots before turning and heading back up the steps.
Richburg’s cousin remembered him as caring, particularly when it came to children.
“Years ago our family got into a really bad bus accident,” the 42-year-old cousin, who gave her name as Candy, recalled. “We were leaving a family picnic…He jumped right in to get all of the children off the bus. He jumped right into action. He was throwing children out the window. He was able to get all the kids off the bus.”
DeJesus’ daughter, Nayiliana, went to high school with Richburg at Public School 310, about a block from the scenes of both slayings.
“I grew up in the same neighborhood,” Nayiliana, 27, said. “I moved away from the neighborhood after my brother got shot … But we all used to hang out. We all knew each other all those years.”
She said Richburg had a good sense of humor despite a difficult childhood.
“He was always a funny kid,” she said. “My brother knew him too. He never had issues. He tried to survive on his own. His mother died first and then his father died. He basically was a kid surviving.”
DeJesus remembers the anguish of burying a son who was gunned down on the street and hates to see another family go through that.
“My son will never come back and neither will the other young man,” DeJesus said. “But to prevent any more deaths they need to keep him in jail for life.”
Coleman is being held without bail on Rikers Island. He is due back in Bronx Criminal Court on the new murder charges March 14.
