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Yonkers resident Laquanna Kershaw, 32, pleaded guilty this week to conspiring to kill an eyewitness to a 2016 Mount Vernon bar shooting, Westchester District Attorney Anthony Scarpino, Jr. announced.
Kershaw was a co-defendant of G-Shine Bloods Gang leader Jason Garcia, who was found guilty last month of attempted murder and other charges in the same case.
While awaiting trial for the bar shooting, Garcia, Kershaw, and others conspired to murder a witness to the shooting, Scarpino said. Kershaw, a girlfriend of Garcia who was allowed to visit the jail, conspired with Garcia to recruit a co-conspirator to find and kill the witness.
Kershaw discovered the whereabouts of the witness and shared the information with Garcia and the other conspirators.
Scarpino said, "Kershaw and Garcia discussed at length the whereabouts of the witness and the best place to commit the murder, preferring a location that did not have surveillance cameras.”
The attempted hit was thwarted when police investigators arrested co-conspirators Damien Rickard and Cassaundra Dunham just after Dunham, at Garcia’s direction, passed a loaded and operable firearm to Rickard with the intention of killing the witness.
Kershaw pleaded guilty to second-degree conspiracy, a felony. She is scheduled to be sentenced on Thursday, June 25.
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