Convicted New York hitman pleads innocence as judge sentences him to life in prison

A defiant drug dealer turned hitman maintained his innocence Monday as a Brooklyn judge sentenced him to life in prison for a 2019 crime. contract killing of a developer.

Anthony Abreu, 36, faced a mandatory life sentence after a jury found him guilty in April of murder-for-hire charge in the 2019 shooting of Xin “Chris” Gu outside a Queens karaoke bar.

“I’m innocent. I didn’t kill anyone,” Abreu told Judge Carol Bagley Amon on Monday. “Yes, I sold marijuana, but selling marijuana does not make me a murderer and does not make me a ruthless person.”

Abreu insisted that he had never seen Gu’s face before. court and added: “I was never there, never killed that man, never killed anyone. I am an innocent man who was sentenced to life imprisonment today.”

Gu’s death was ordered by his former boss and mentor. Manhattan developer Qing Ming “Allen” Yu who wanted revenge after his former protégé started his own business and poached several clients on the way out.

Yu entrusted it to his nephew to assemble a team of assassins, and accomplice Zhe Zhang hired Abreu to pull the trigger. Yu and Zhang were found guilty in a separate court hearing in October.

Around 2:35 a.m., February 12, 2019, Abreu. executed Gu as he waited for an Uber at the Grand Slam KTV karaoke bar in Flushing. The jury found that Abreu’s payment for the murder was an expensive Richard Mille wristwatch worth more than $100,000, prosecutors said.

“Mr. Abreu stalked and killed a young, innocent man, killing him at point-blank range in the back of the head,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Devon Lash said Monday.

Abreu is already serving a 24-year prison sentence for cocaine distribution in Mississippi.

Amon rejected Abreu’s lawyer Susan Kellman’s request to overturn the conviction and criticized Abreu’s “reprehensible” testimony in his own defense at trial. “In the court’s view, he chose to take a stand by openly lying about his involvement.”

Kellman argued that “no reasonable juror could find that the fact that Zhang gave Mr. Abreu a watch within a year of the murder proved that the watch was payment for the murder.”

At Monday’s hearing, Kellman said, “I think I’ll save my remarks for the appeals court.”