http://www.nynewsday.com/news/local/manhattan/nyc-nydead0920,0,1562705.story?coll=nyc-topheadlines-left

Knicks star's cousin killed

BY JOSHUA ROBIN AND DARYL KHAN
Staff Writer

September 19, 2004, 8:56 PM EDT


A spray of gunfire in the courtyard of a Coney Island housing project killed two people early Sunday morning, one of them a close relative of Knicks star Stephon Marbury, police and family members said.

Yusuf McEaddy, 32, whose father and Marbury's father are first cousins, was pronounced dead at the scene, 3028 W. 29th St. His mother said he was talking on a cell phone with his fiancee of less than a week when he was shot. He and the other victim had been attending a party at a nearby apartment building and had quarreled with another person, police said.

As they left and walked into an adjacent courtyard at about 4:20 a.m., an unidentified assailant fired several shots, striking both victims and killing them.

Police officials said detectives are questioning a "person of interest," as well as several witnesses from inside and outside the party. There had been no arrests as of yesterday evening.

Police identified the second victim as Allen Lewis, 20, of nearby 3030 Surf Ave., who went by his middle name, Jason. His family said he worked in housekeeping at Greenpark Care Center, a nursing facility in Downtown Brooklyn, and aspired to become a carpenter.

McEaddy occasionally saw his ballplayer cousin, most recently at a cookout this summer, said Dave Turner, who is the companion of McEaddy's mother.

McEaddy lived with his girlfriend in Canarsie and grew up in several places around the city with his mother. Marbury grew up in the Coney Island projects -- Surfside Gardens -- between Surf and Mermaid avenues where McEaddy was shot and where both still have many relatives.

"They see each other," said Turner, 41, a postal employee. "If he was at a cookout, he would be there."

McEaddy is the third of her five children to die by gunfire, said his mother, Louise Brown of Stuyvesant Heights. The first, Daoud, who went by the nickname Dee, was killed at age 22 in 1991; the second, Omar, 27, was killed six years later.

Marbury, an All-Star point guard and member of the 2004 Olympic basketball team, was believed to be working out in Los Angeles yesterday in preparation for training camp and could not be reached for comment.

In 1995, a friend and teammate of Marbury from high school was killed in Brooklyn. Brown, 52, said her son had proposed marriage to his girlfriend last week. At the time of the shooting, he was talking to his fiancee on the phone and headed to her Canarsie home.

"While they were on the phone, she heard shots," said Brown, a case manager for people infected with HIV. "Then the phone went dead."

R.I.P.