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BROOKLYN, N.Y. (PIX11) — Run-DMC’s DJ Jam Master Jay was ambushed and executed by the childhood friends he was supporting after the rap group’s money and fame waned more than two decades ago, according to prosecutors.
“The bullet burned his hair and skin on his head,” Assistant United States Attorney Miranda Gonzalez said during opening arguments Monday in Brooklyn federal court during the trial of two men accused in the fatal shooting of Jason Mizell, better known as Jam Master Jay.
Mizell’s godson, Karl Jordan, Jr. 40, and his childhood buddy, Ronald Washington, 59, are accused in the hip-hop star’s slaying in 2002. The defendants are charged with murder while engaged in narcotics trafficking and firearm-related murder, prosecutors said. Jordan faces several other drug distribution charges.
Jordan allegedly shot Mizell point-blank in the head while he was on a couch playing video games in his Jamaica, Queens recording studio at around 7:30 p.m. on Oct. 30, 2002, prosecutors said. Tony Rincon was curled up on the couch with a gunshot wound in the leg and Lydia High was found hysterical in the studio, according to authorities. High identified Jordan as the shooter nine months after the incident and Rincon came forward in 2016, prosecutors said.
A third defendant, Jay Bryant, allegedly let his accomplices into the building on Merrick Boulevard through a fire escape. Jordan then walked into the studio and shot Mizell when he stood up, prosecutors said. Mizell died instantly. Investigators said they found Mizell lying on the floor motionless with a pool of blood by his head.
“It was an ambush, an execution. He was murdered in his own studio by people he knew,” Gonzalez said.
Prosecutors allege Mizell was helping the defendants financially by looping them into his drug-dealing business after the group was no longer in the limelight. But Mizell had cut Jordan and Washington out of a $200,000 narcotics deal in Baltimore, which allegedly led to the fatal encounter, authorities said.
"It was motivated by greed and revenge," Gonzalez said.
Twenty years after the slaying, Jordan allegedly admitted if Mizell was still alive, he would “kill him again,” Gonzalez told the jury.
The defense contends the government's case relies on "aging memories" and no physical evidence.
Det. James Lusk testified on cross-examination there were no photos of the fire escape in the building taken in 2002 and no video surveillance footage was collected, despite evidence that the studio had a security system.
The investigator also acknowledged none of the five people in the recording studio at the time of the incident called 911. Mizell’s friend and business partner Randy Allen ran to the 103rd Precinct about a block away from the studio to alert police, Lusk said.
“They (the prosecutors) have no clue who did it,” Washington’s lawyer, Ezra Spilke, said. “This whole case revolves around a blink of an eye a generation ago.”
Spilke said Washington was an alcoholic sleeping on Mizell’s sister’s couch at the time of the incident.
“Why bite the hand that feeds you?” Spilke said.
The trial is expected to last four weeks.
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