Gang member who killed Brooklyn teen with stray bullet gets 20 years in prison

A Brooklyn gangbanger was hit with 20 years behind bars for the stray-bullet killing of a 15-year-old boy, half the amount of time the teen’s distraught family hoped he’d get.

Zidon Clarke, 23, was found guilty of manslaughter and other charges last month for the 2017 shooting of Rohan Levy, who was going home with friends when Clarke opened fire, wrongly thinking he had rival gang members in his sights.

Zidon Clarke

Brooklyn Supreme Court Judge Danny Chun handed down a 20 to 21 year sentence Tuesday after hearing emotional statements from Rohan’s parents and two young sisters.

“It’s never going to be enough,” Rohan’s mother, Nadine Sylvester, said. “I don’t think it sends a strong enough message to the people in our community who choose a life of crime. I’m pretty disappointed.”

She added, “Now we continue to live with the hole that this young man has put in our lives.”

Chun found Clarke not guilty of murder in November after a bench trial in Brooklyn Supreme Court, but convicted him of manslaughter, attempted assault, weapons charges, conspiracy and reckless endangerment.

Even though prosecutors and Rohan’s family wanted a 40-year sentence, the boy’s mom praised the judge, saying she was happy he rejected a plea from Clarke’s lawyer to designate him a youthful offender.

“No sentence that I can possibly give will ever bring Rohan back,” the judge said. “That is the most sad thing about this particular case. Rohan Levy did not deserve to die.”

Rohan Levy

Clarke was 17 years old and a member of the Folk Nation Gang on Feb. 20, 2017, when he was out on the streets of East Flatbush looking for rival gang members to shoot, prosecutors said.

Instead, he found Rohan and three of his friends on E. 55th St. near Lenox Road., on their way home from playing basketball on an unseasonably warm day.

Mistaking them for members of an enemy gang, Clarke burst out of the passenger seat of a car and started shooting, hitting one of Rohan’s pals in the leg.

The teens scrambled for cover, but Clarke kept shooting, hitting Rohan in the back of the head. A bullet fragment entered Rohan’s brain.

Rohan, who family members described as a spirited prankster with dreams of becoming an architect and the ambition to make it happen, died three days later.

Police said shortly after the shooting that one of Rohan’s friends was wearing red and black, and Clarke may have mistaken him for a Bloods gang member.

“You wanted to choose to be a gangbanger,” Sylvester told Clarke at his sentencing. “You took away my only sunshine with your five shots on my block, in my neighborhood… You destroyed me and my family.”

Clarke bragged about his dead aim in a recording on a fellow gang member’s cell phone, boasting that “when he shoots, he gets headshots,” Brooklyn Assistant District Attorney Matthew Perry said in opening statements in the case.

After his arrest, Clarke continued to live the Folk Nation gang life on Rikers Island, getting into bloody fights and wielding blades against other inmates, Perry said.

Rohan’s sister, Kyla Robotham, struggled with the loss of her beloved sibling.

“All I can ask is, “Why him, what did he do to deserve this?’ she told the court. “I was 11, with nothing but anger, grief and empty space.”

She also addressed her slain brother directly, saying she wanted him to know that his family will persevere.

“Rohan, if you’re listening, I want you to know that your sister is OK. We’re still pushing… I graduated middle and high school, and I made it to college,” she said. “The first person I wanted a call from on my 18th birthday was you, knowing I wouldn’t get that call. I hope that you see everything I’m doing, and I hope at least you’d be proud of who I’m becoming this far.”

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