Murder of witness draws life sentence
Witness killer gets life term
Victim was to testify about N.O. drug ring
Friday, June 06, 2008
By Susan Finch
A New Orleans man will spend the rest of his life in prison for killing a federal witness five years ago to keep her from testifying in a trial involving a large-scale cocaine trafficking ring, one of whose members ordered the hit and supplied the gun to carry it out.
U.S. District Judge Martin L.C. Feldman imposed the mandatory sentence on Donald “Big” Sylvester for his conviction by a jury last fall on charges of conspiring with Terrance “Breeze” Lash, 34, to distribute 5 kilograms of cocaine and, at Lash’s behest, murdering the witness, Demetra “Deedy Bird” Norse, on a street corner near her home with a .45-caliber handgun he got from Lash.
Prosecutors said Norse, who was in her 30s, was killed in retaliation for telling a federal grand jury and a law enforcement officer about Lash’s drug dealing, as well as to stop her from taking the stand in the federal trial of another of the drug conspirators.
Lash, already in federal prison after being convicted in 2006 on the same charges as Sylvester, was described by prosecutors as a “big-time drug dealer” who distributed 100- to 150-pound shipments of cocaine that another man brought from Houston every week.
U.S. Attorney Jim Letten said Norse was targeted after she made the mistake of telling “thugs” involved in the drug dealing that she had been called by the grand jury; such information is normally kept secret and federal witnesses are advised to be discreet, prosecutors said.
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