A Brooklyn tow truck driver has been charged with misdemeanor assault for throwing a punch that killed a 61-year-old man arguing to keep his car from being impounded, police said Monday.
Kevon Johnson, 30, was released without bail after being arraigned in Brooklyn Criminal Court on Monday morning. Cops say he punched Carlyle Thomas in the face, sending the older man sprawling to the ground.
Thomas’ family said the fatal confrontation was over a $10 parking fee at a gas station where the victim regularly helped out.
Johnson has no criminal history, police say. The victim had been arrested seven times in the past, three of the busts for felonies, according to cops.
Johnson’s lawyer Howard Schwartz said Thomas was the aggressor and attacked his client in his tow truck. He contended that Johnson had committed no crime and that video of the encounter will bear that out.
Thomas’ death has been classified a homicide, but so-called one-punch homicides are not typically prosecuted with a murder or manslaughter charge. Police said the Brooklyn district attorney’s office will decide if further charges should be added.
Suspects in one-punch cases often face only assault charges initially, and prosecutors typically have to weigh the intent of the attacker, the demeanor of the victim and if any medical conditions might have contributed to a death.
Thomas lived down the block from the Shell station on Clarkson Ave. near Rockaway Parkway where he hung out, sometimes pitched in working for free and often left his car, his family said.
“We thought the gas station guys and him were cool because he was in there helping and unpacking with them,” the victim’s nephew Dominic Graham, 37, said Sunday. “We didn’t think they’d ever call a tow truck and do that.”
About 8:45 p.m. on Saturday, Thomas saw his Honda Odyssey being hooked to a tow truck and confronted Johnson, police and his family said.
As the argument escalated, Johnson punched Thomas in the face, causing the victim to fall and hit his head on the pavement, police said.
Medics took Thomas to Brookdale University Hospital, where he died at 9:17 p.m.
The gas station charges local residents $10 to park overnight if they can’t find onstreet parking, the victim’s family said.
“He came around and was enjoying the nice weather [Saturday],” said Thomas’ stepdaughter Andrele Peters. “I guess he didn’t pay the $10. He lived here a long time and has a relationship with them. He didn’t pay right away, but they do have his contact and my mom’s contact.”
Peters said that when Thomas did get called he ran to the station and saw his car already had been hooked up to the truck.
“He’s verbally arguing with the tow truck guy and what I heard next, the guy hits him so hard he fell to the floor and his heart stopped,” she said.
Thomas, a former jockey in his native Jamaica, worked training and feeding horses at the Aqueduct racetrack in Queens, his family said.
Peters pointed out that Thomas was such a regular presence at the gas station that most of his social media photos were taken there.
“He’s really a good guy. What hurts to know is that he spent so much time supporting this gas station,” she said. “He always tries to help them out. To call the tow truck and not call the person first, it doesn’t make sense.”
The Shell station parking lot was the scene of a horrific screwdriver stabbing on July 24, 2022.
A shirtless drunken man passed out in the parking lot woke up and confronted a man pushing a Citi Bike, according to a witness. When the 47-year-old shirtless man insisted the bicyclist had taken something from him and demanded it back, the other man whipped out a screwdriver and stabbed him. The victim suffered two collapsed lungs.
With Roni Jacobson
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