Guilty Plea in Robbery Scheme Targeting Patrons of NYC Gay Bars
A guilty plea has been entered by one man from a suspected gang that targeted patrons of gay bars in New York City for robbery by drugging them and then using their own phones to steal their money, NBC News reported.
The suspect in question, 30-year-old Eddie Ashley, is thought to have been part of a scheme that swept up at least 16 victims and resulted in two known deaths. The victims who died — 25-year-old Julio Ramirez and 34-year-old John Umberger — died of overdoses after being seen leaving gay bars with several other men.
"Prosecutors alleged the suspects drugged the victims, used their incapacitated faces to unlock their cellphones using facial recognition technology and then robbed them," NBC News detailed.
"Ashley, who was arraigned in the crimes separately at different times throughout last and this year, had pleaded not guilty" earlier, NBC News reported. "On Monday [Oct. 23], he changed his plea to guilty" to charges of "robbery, grand larceny and identity theft," the article specified.
The news report did not offer further details as to why Ashley changed his plea or whether he had been offered a plea bargain, but his lawyer "confirmed his client's guilty plea and said Ashley is expected to be sentenced to nine years in state prison on Nov. 20," NBC News noted.
"Five other men — Jayqwan Hamilton, Robert Demaio, Jacob Barroso, Andre Butts and Shane Hoskins — were charged and arrested in connection with the same crime scheme," NBC News added. "The charges for the first three include murder."
As previously reported, The NYPD announced that it would look anew into cases of drugging and robbery targeting gay bar patrons — some dating back decades — following the deaths of Ramirez and Umberger in April and May of 2022, respectively.
Both victims had reportedly gone to bars in the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood of New York. As previously reported, Ramirez left the Ritz Bar and Lounge with three unidentified men on the evening of April 21, 2022. Ramirez was found unresponsive in a taxi a few hours later. Days after his death, someone using Ramirez's phone emptied his bank accounts.
Ramirez "died from the effects of a concoction that included fentanyl, heroin, cocaine, lidocaine and ethanol, the medical examiner's office said" last March 3, Gothamist detailed.
Umberger reportedly went to gay bar The Q NYC on May 28 of 2022. After leaving the bar and being spotted in a car in the company of three men, Umberger "was found dead on June 1 in an apartment in an Upper East Side townhouse belonging to his employer, Donald Trump impeachment lawyer Jay Sekulow of the American Center for Law and Justice," news outlet W42ST reported.
After reports of Ramirez's and Umberger's deaths, a number of men stepped forward to describe how they were assaulted in a similar manner. Some victims had accused the city's law enforcement of "not initially tak[ing] their cases as seriously as they had hoped," NBC News reported last summer.
A second criminal ring seems to have been operating in the city along the same lines. NBC News noted that, "In a separate yet similar case, prosecutors in June indicted Kenwood Allen and Sean Shirley, alleging the men were involved in a drugging, robbery and larceny spree in New York City that totaled 21 victims and led to the deaths of five people from March to December 2022. Allen was initially indicted in December in connection with two of the murders."
"Allen and Shirley have pleaded not guilty to all charges."