Prosecutor: Five Teens Order Takeout, Kill Deliveryman

Q U E E N S, N.Y., Sept. 6 -- Five teenagers never before in trouble with the police were charged today in Queens, N.Y., with beating a deliveryman to death for a $60 order of Chinese food, New York police said.

The teenagers — the youngest was just 14 — had already consumed Chinese food when, apparently still hungry, they placed an order Friday night for delivery from the Golden Wok restaurant to an abandoned house in St. Albans, Queens, a suburb-like New York City borough.

When the deliveryman, Sheng Jin Liu, 44, arrived at the vacant house carrying orders of General Tso’s chicken, chicken and broccoli, shrimp low men and shrimp egg foo yung, the teenagers beat Liu with fists and bricks. The teenagers then fled with one bag of food, leaving Liu for dead.

“They were just looking for a free meal,” one law enforcement official said. Police say the teenagers planned the attack before placing their order.

The crime is reminiscent of the killing of two pizza deliveryman in New Jersey in 1997, a case that garnered national attention to its random, callous nature. Authorities dubbed the slayings of Jeremy Giordano and Georgio Gallara “thrill killings” because they said the teens simply wanted to kill someone. Both suspects have been convicted; one of the killers is on death row.

“He was killed without provocation and without reason,” Queens District Attorney Richard A. Brownsaid of the recent slaying. “It was a shocking crime which leaves us all shaking ourheads as to why these kids would do what they are accused ofdoing.”

Traced by a Cell Phone

New York City detectives investigating the killing arrested the teenagers after tracing a call to a cell phone one of them used to place the order.

The teenagers, all friends from Queens, were identified as Robert Savage, 14, James Stone, 16, Stacy Royster, 17, Jamel Murphy, 17, and Darryl Tyson, 17. All were charged with second-degree murder; first-degree manslaughter, robbery and criminal possession of a weapon offenses.