A stepfather allegedly gave a gun to his stepson and told him to “do what he had to do” in a botched hit of his nephew that left an innocent teenager dead in Westchester County, prosecutors said.
Wicked stepdad Phillip Ferrill, 48, is accused of giving a handgun to 22-year-old stepson Tyrese Coghill before the young man gunned down Zyaire Fernandez while shooting at another person in Mount Vernon last year, Iohud.com reported.
“But for this defendant providing that gun Zyaire Fernandez would be alive today,” Assistant District Attorney Adrian Murphy said in Westchester County Court Friday, according to the outlet.
Coghill has pleaded guilty to a murder charge is cooperating against Ferrill, who is now facing a murder charge of his own, reports said.
Prosecutors said the deadly encounter unfolded in March of last year, as Coghill was helping Ferrill move to an apartment in Yonkers.
They said a group of three teens, including Fernandez and Ferrill’s nephew, accosted Coghill on the street, brandishing a knife and a gun.
That’s when Ferrill showed up and got into a screaming match with his nephew, whom he had accused of stealing from him in the past, Murphy told the court.
After the fight was over, Ferrill allegedly retrieved a 9mm semi-automatic pistol from a lock box in his apartment, gave it to his stepson, and told him to “do what he had to do” – implying that he should blow his nephew away, officials claimed.
Coghill found the teens on the street and opened fire at the nephew, but Fernandez was the one who was hit, according to the the report.
The gun was allegedly found later in the oven of Ferrill’s apartment, and Murphy told the court that video evidence would show him retrieving it from the apartment of his stepson’s girlfriend.
Ferrill is charged with second-degree murder, second- and third-degree criminal possession of a weapon, hindering prosecution and tampering with physical evidence.
