7/4/2023 0 Comments Spikes by Michael Griffith![]() ![]() ![]() Late on the night of Friday, December 19, 1986, four black men, Michael Griffith, 23 Cedric Sandiford, 36 Curtis Sylvester and Timothy Grimes, both 20, were traveling from Brooklyn to Queens to pick up Griffith's paycheck, when their car, a 1976 Buick, broke down on a deserted stretch of Cross Bay Boulevard near the neighborhoods of Broad Channel and Far Rockaway. He immigrated to the United States from Trinidad with his family in 1973. ![]() The other victims were Willie Turks in 1982 and Yusef Hawkins in 1989. Griffith's death heightened racial tensions in New York City and was the second of three highly publicized, racially motivated killings of black men by white mobs in New York City in the 1980s. A fourth assailant, Michael Pirone, was acquitted. Three local teenagers, Jon Lester, Scott Kern, and Jason Ladone, were convicted of manslaughter for the death of Griffith. Griffith fled onto a highway where he was fatally struck by a passing motorist. Two of the victims, including Griffith, were severely beaten. Griffith and two other black men were set upon by a group of white youths outside a pizza parlor. Michael Griffith (Ma– December 20, 1986) was a 23-year-old black man who was killed on December 20, 1986, in Howard Beach, in Queens, New York City, in a racially motivated attack. ![]() 1986 racially motivated murder in Queens, New York, United States ![]()
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