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"What are you going to do, shoot us?" These were evidently the last words of Seattle actress Nicole DuFresne, murdered in NYC in January 2005 during a botched mugging.
Rudy Fleming, who's charged with the shooting, did so because she challenged him to, according to testimony in Fleming's trial (NY Times, reg req.).
Tatiana McDonald, one of the teenage muggers with Fleming that night, testified that the seven-person group attempted to mug two other people that night, and were unsuccessful both times (one guy ran away, another pretended to reach for a gun in his jacket).
Then they encountered DuFrense, 28, her fiancee Jeffrey Sparks, and another couple, walking down the sidewalk at 3 a.m.
“I’d like to bang on these people right here,” Miss McDonald quoted Mr. Fleming as saying when he spotted the two couples walking on Clinton Street, south of Rivington Street.Mr. Fleming hit Mr. Sparks in the eye with his gun, then yanked away Ms. Gibson’s purse, tossing it to the two girls, who rifled through it, Miss McDonald said.
Concerned about her fiancé, Ms. duFresne approached Mr. Sparks and said, “Let me see your eye,” while lifting his hand, which was covering his injured eye, Miss McDonald said.
Then she confronted Mr. Fleming, yelling her challenge, and he shot her, the witness said.
“He was so mad, he just lift up the gun and shot at her,” Miss McDonald said. “After I saw her grab her chest, I just ran.”
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What were they doing in that part of town? Hadn't they seen Rent? Or maybe they did and they got the wrong idea. Avenue B is for the Brave, Avenue C is for the Crazy!
Nicole wasn't trying to get Fleming to shoot her; that would be suicidal. She was trying to stand up for herself, and for her fiance, who had just been hit so hard by his eye that he couldn't see straight. She was angry and probably terrified, although we'll never know for sure; that knowledge has been taken away from us. What a sad state of affairs that we blame the victim of a crime for the crime itself. Fleming had a gun, and I find it hard to believe that anyone who hits the streets of New York at 3 am with a gun, and the intention to "bang on" passers-by, isn't looking for an excuse to use it. For all we know, Nicole could have stayed silent and compliant, and he would have shot her anyway. And how, exactly, did a teenager with a criminal record obtain a gun in the first place? A better and fairer title for this article might be, "Trial of Seattle Actress's Murderer Confirms That Loose Gun Control Laws Kill Innocent People".
And for the record, they were on the Lower East Side, on Clinton Street, not on Avenue C.
You know what's worse than challenging someone to shoot you?
Shooting someone.
I think the obvious lesson here is to challenge muggers to shoot themselves.
they are making it sound like there was a reason someone was murdered, because she challeneged him...uuuum, pretty sure that is no justification to kill someone. Nikki challenging him is irrelevant to his decision to shoot her.