A Brooklyn man convicted of the ambush and killing of his ex-girlfriend on her way to work was hit with 40-years-to-life in prison Wednesday — in absentia after he failed to show up in court.
Keon Richmond stalked his 25-year-old ex-girlfriend, Alastasia Bryan, a Department of Correction officer, for days by putting a GPS on her car before murdering her shortly after 9 p.m on Dec. 4, 2016 outside her mother’s Canarsie home. Bryan was sitting in her car when Richmond fired through the window.
Prosecutors said Richmond became enraged over losing a white BMW Bryan had leased for him while they were dating between 2014 and 2015.
Richmond, 37, was convicted of murder and criminal possession of a weapon. He was originally set to be sentenced Dec. 4, 2019 but missed numerous sentencing dates after refusing to come to court.
Judge Danny Chun decided to sentence Richmond in absentia Wednesday. One court officer said in 23 years, he’d never seen a sentencing where the defendant wasn’t present.
“I’m glad that he’s going to be in prison. He’s going to rot in prison for what he did to my daughter,” said Bryan’s mother, Ingrid Bryan, after the sentencing.
Ingrid testified at the trial, recalling when she heard the gunshots after her daughter left her house, though she didn’t witness the shooting.
“I heard a gunshot when she left — like five minutes, seven minutes after. Pow, pow, pow,” Ingrid Bryan testified at the trial.
Bryan, a rookie corrections officer, was on her way to Rikers Island for an overnight shift when she was murdered. She was shot five times in the chest, hand and both arms as she sat in her car at the corner of Avenue L and East 73rd St., in Bergen Beach, according to prosecutors. Richmond then fled the scene in a Hyundai Elantra, registered to his new girlfriend, Shirley Mejia, 26, prosecutors said.
Surveillance footage, cellphone site records and other electronic data placed Richmond at the scene at the time of the murder.
“This defendant meticulously planned this cowardly and cold-blooded killing, tracking Officer Alastasia Bryan’s movements and executing her during an evening ambush,” said Brooklyn DA Eric Gonzalez when Richmond was found guilty. “Her life was taken far too soon and hopefully, her heartbroken family, friends and fellow correction officers find some measure of justice in the jury’s verdict.”