J’Ouvert Shooter Admits To Firing At Festival Crowd, Killing Dad Of 4: Brooklyn DA

CROWN HEIGHTS, BROOKLYN — A young man who shot his gun into the crowd at Brooklyn's annual J'Ouvert street festival in 2014, killing a father of four, finally admitted in court Friday that he was to blame, according to the Brooklyn District Attorney.

Crown Heights resident Derek Goodings, then 26, fired his loaded weapon into the crowd five times around 3:30 a.m. on Sept. 1, 2014 — killing local dad Michael Sampson, 55, and wounding two others near the intersection of Empire Boulevard and Rogers Avenue. After a brief police chase, he was taken into custody that same morning by the NYPD.

Three other people were also killed that night at J'Ouvert.

Goodings "senselessly fired into a crowd of revelers, taking a man's life and marring what should have been a night of celebration," Acting DA Eric Gonzalez said Friday.

"The festivities surrounding J'Ouvert ought to be a joyful time for the community," Gonzalez said, "and we will aggressively prosecute anyone who shoots or harms people at this annual event or anywhere else in Brooklyn."

Goodings won't be sentenced until next month. However, the judge presiding over his case has indicated he plans to give the J'Ouvert killer 24 years in prison, according to the DA.

J'Ouvert is an annual party held in the streets of Crown Heights as a tribute to the covert celebrations Caribbean slaves used to throw the night before Carnival. Each year, it proceeds the West Indian Day Parade, which is held in the same area around Labor Day. And each year, spurts of random violence along the J'Ouvert route darken the celebration for everyone.

Sampson, the man who died from Goodings' bullet, was reportedly a father of four from the small island country of Grenada.

“He had grandchildren!” his longtime girlfriend, Veronica Jeremiah, remembered in an interview with the New York Daily News. “You just can’t kill people like that. Even birds... they don’t shoot them down like that.”

Jeremiah said her boyfriend had been excited to wear a custom-made T-shirt, yellow and green like the colors of his native flag, to the West Indian Day Parade the next morning.

“He had a tailor make it,” Jeremiah told the Daily News. “But he didn’t make it back Monday morning. He really wanted to wear it. He loved his country so much.”

The following year, at J'Ouvert 2015, gang crossfire killed Clinton Hill dad-to-be and state government employee Carey Gabay.

And at J'Ouvert 2016 — although Mayor Bill de Blasio promised it would be "the safest J'Ouvert ever" — 22-year-old Canarsie woman Tiarah Poyau was shot dead along the route, as was another 17-year-old boy.

"J'ouvert is like a violent 'Purge,' if you will," Poyau's grieving mother, Vertina Brown, told Patch a few weeks after her daughter was killed. Just like in "Purge" film series, Brown said, J'Ouvert has become a one-night outlet for "senseless crazy people" to reek havoc on Brooklyn.

Brown called on de Blasio to cancel the event in 2017. "This is senseless — it's been going on for too long," she said. "The murders need to stop."

Lead photo courtesy of the Brooklyn DA