Man executed on busy Midtown street in planned ‘hit’
By LARRY CELONA, KIRSTAN CONLEY and KENNETH GARGER
Last Updated: 12:16 PM, December 11, 2012
Police investigate the scene where a man was executed on West 58th St.
A man in a business suit was executed in broad daylight on a Midtown street packed with holiday shoppers, tourists and workers returning from lunch yesterday, in what authorities called a carefully coordinated “assassination.”
The victim, 31-year-old Los Angeles resident Brandon Lincoln Woodard, had just left a hotel and was walking on West 58th Street shortly before 2 p.m. when his silent assassin came out of nowhere, authorities and witnesses said.
Woodard, the father of a 4-year-old girl, was texting before the shooting, sources said.
GORY DETAIL: With a barrier to shield the bloody scene from passers-by, police look over the scene where Brandon Lincoln Woodard (right) was gunned down yesterday.
The killer walked up behind him, whipped out a silver semiautomatic handgun and fired once into the back of his head.
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A police source said the shooting was “definitely a hit, an assassination.”
Investigators are probing a possible connection to drug dealing.
Woodard was charged with cocaine possession in California last June and has prior arrests for robbery, petty theft and leaving the scene of an accident.
Police are also exploring to what extent Woodard — who once claimed he was roughed up by bodyguards working for R&B superstar Usher — had ties to the music industry, law-enforcement sources said.
more:
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/manhattan/murder_hit_and_run_93juIYcZQt9vppBdfLE0xH
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