Prime Suspect in Racial Killing Is Unrecognized in Police Lineup

None of three witnesses to the slaying of a black teen-ager in a predominantly white Brooklyn neighborhood singled out the man police say did the killing when they saw him in a lineup, WCBS-TV said Sunday.

The broadcast said the three friends who were with Yusuf Hawkins the night he was shot did not point out Joseph Fama as the one who did the shooting when the four young blacks were confronted by a mob of white youths from the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn.

Police and prosecutors believe it was Fama who fired the shots that killed 16-year-old Hawkins on Aug. 23 when white youths, some of whom were armed with baseball bats, surrounded him and his black friends. Police said they were mistaken for friends of a young white woman who had jilted a white youth for a black boyfriend.

The report said that in a lineup of Fama and police officers, two of Hawkins’ friends picked the officers and the third witness made no identification.

WCBS-TV said that two other suspects in the case have identified Fama as the gunman.