Five people, including a 16-year-old boy, have been charged in the caught-on-camera December shooting death of a Brooklyn laundromat owner shot for his $60,000 gold chain, police said Thursday.
Ronnie Butler, 46, Shaleek Riddick, 19, Louis Mercado, 48, Diante Stinson, 20, and the teen were each charged with murder, robbery and conspiracy in the Dec. 1 slaying of Money Perkins, 37, inside the victim’s East Flatbush laundromat.
Shocking surveillance video obtained by The Daily News shows Perkins’ final moments as he tends to a washing machine inside the laundromat on Clarendon Road near Schenectady Ave.
Suddenly, four of the crooks burst into the store dressed in black and blue hoodies. One of them pulls a gun, with Perkins fighting back and wrestling with the gunman until they fall to the ground, at which point the accomplices pulled their own guns.
At least one robber fired, with Perkins shot a number of times in his face and body.
The chain was then ripped from Perkins’ neck, his head slamming on the ground as the crook tried in vain to yank it off before lifting it over the victim’s head.
The killers fled in a white sedan that was later recovered. Police said clothes and cell phones were found during subsequent search warrants, helping police identify the suspects.
Medics rushed Perkins to Kings County Hospital but he could not be saved.
Perkins’ sister, Shanequa Perkins, 40, later told the Daily News he had told her he was going to stop and see her after he checked in on his business.
“He never came back,” she lamented. “They killed him. They assassinated him.”
The victim, she said, “always put everyone before him” and was named Money because that was his father’s nickname. His pricey chain, she said, was something he worked hard for.
“He wasn’t going to let anyone take it just like that,” she said. “He had many such chains.”
Police said the teen and the 19-year-old have no prior arrests.
Butler, according to records, has served four stints in state prison. He served more than two years, ending in 2001, on a weapons charge. He later served about three years for two separate drug convictions and then did 6 1/2 years for an attempted robbery conviction in Brooklyn. He was conditionally released in 2012.
Stinson has one prior arrest, Mercado has eight and Butler has 10. The adult suspects all live in the Rockaways in Queens.
