The body of a
missing 19-year-old gay student from New York was
found dumped on railroad tracks in Brooklyn last week.
DeAndre
Matthews, also known as Dre, was found Tuesday lying on freight train tracks on
Nostrand Avenue near SUNY Broome Community College where he was a student.
Police say his body had a gunshot wound to the head and “significant burn
wounds throughout his body.” A medical examiner also found Matthews had
suffered from smoke inhalation prior to his death.
Members of
Matthews’s family were left distraught by the murder and are demanding answers.
“Now, as a
mother, I’m suffering. My daughter don’t have a big brother. My sister don’t
have a nephew, my mother don’t have a grandson," mother Danielle Mathews
told WCBS-TV.
“This is
disgusting. Like, my brother didn’t do anything to nobody, and I can really say
that,” sister Dajanae Gillespie told WCBS-TV. “He wasn’t in a gang.
He wasn’t a violent kid. He wasn’t a bad kid. You know what I’m saying? He
stayed in the house.”
Gillespie
told WNBC her brother was gay and wondered if the
murder might have been a hate crime.
“What was the
reason?” Gillespie told local WNBC. “DeAndre wasn’t a violent
person.”
According to
family and police, Matthews left work at the Buggy Service Center in Crowne
Heights last Monday, February 6, around 5 p.m. He'd just recently started
working there. He stopped by his mother's residence to borrow her Jeep, and
nobody saw him after that. When he didn’t respond to her attempts to reach him,
Matthews was able to track the location of the burned-out Jeep.
Police were
able to locate Matthews’s body a short time later.
Matthews
studied criminal justice at SUNY Broome Community College. His friends
remembered a warm and trusting person, and at least one friend speculated if
Matthews might have been too trusting of others.
The body of a
missing 19-year-old gay student from New York was
found dumped on railroad tracks in Brooklyn last week.
DeAndre
Matthews, also known as Dre, was found Tuesday lying on freight train tracks on
Nostrand Avenue near SUNY Broome Community College where he was a student.
Police say his body had a gunshot wound to the head and “significant burn
wounds throughout his body.” A medical examiner also found Matthews had
suffered from smoke inhalation prior to his death.
Members of
Matthews’s family were left distraught by the murder and are demanding answers.
“Now, as a
mother, I’m suffering. My daughter don’t have a big brother. My sister don’t
have a nephew, my mother don’t have a grandson," mother Danielle Mathews
told WCBS-TV.
“This is
disgusting. Like, my brother didn’t do anything to nobody, and I can really say
that,” sister Dajanae Gillespie told WCBS-TV. “He wasn’t in a gang.
He wasn’t a violent kid. He wasn’t a bad kid. You know what I’m saying? He
stayed in the house.”
Gillespie
told WNBC her brother was gay and wondered if the
murder might have been a hate crime.
“What was the
reason?” Gillespie told local WNBC. “DeAndre wasn’t a violent
person.”
According to
family and police, Matthews left work at the Buggy Service Center in Crowne
Heights last Monday, February 6, around 5 p.m. He'd just recently started
working there. He stopped by his mother's residence to borrow her Jeep, and
nobody saw him after that. When he didn’t respond to her attempts to reach him,
Matthews was able to track the location of the burned-out Jeep.
Police were
able to locate Matthews’s body a short time later.
Matthews
studied criminal justice at SUNY Broome Community College. His friends
remembered a warm and trusting person, and at least one friend speculated if
Matthews might have been too trusting of others.
"He was
just so nice to people,” Daviona Miley told WCBS-TV. “Just always
too nice, and sometimes people could take that for granted.”
SOURCE: THE ADVOCATE
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