A stepfather allegedly gave his stepson a gun and told him to “do what he had to do” in a botched attack on his cousin that left an innocent teenager dead in Westchester County, prosecutors said.
Evil stepfather Phillip Ferrill, 48, is accused of giving a gun to 22-year-old stepson Tyrese Coghill before the young man shot Zyaire Fernandez while shooting at another person in Mount Vernon last year. Iohud.com reports this.
“But for this defendant who provided the gun, Zyaire Fernandez would still be alive today,” Assistant District Attorney Adrian Murphy said Friday in Westchester County Court, according to the outlet.
Coghill has pleaded guilty to a murder charge and is cooperating against Ferrill, who now faces murder charges himself, reports said.
Prosecutors said the deadly encounter happened last March, when Coghill was helping Ferrill move into an apartment in Yonkers.
They said a group of three teenagers, including Fernandez and Ferrill’s cousin, approached Coghill in the street, brandishing a knife and a gun.
That’s when Ferrill showed up and got into an argument with his cousin, who he accused in the past of stealing from him, Murphy told the court.
After the fight was over, Ferrill reportedly retrieved a 9mm semi-automatic pistol from a key 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 cousin away. , officials claimed.
Coghill found the teens in the street and opened fire on the cousin, but Fernandez was the one hit, according to the report.
The gun was reportedly later found in the oven of Ferrill’s apartment, and Murphy told the court that video evidence allegedly showed him taking it from his stepson’s girlfriend’s apartment.
Ferrill is charged with second-degree murder, second- and third-degree criminal possession of a weapon, hindering prosecution and tampering with physical evidence.
