Woman Who Shot Robber Faces Charges

In a case that is being billed as a replay of the infamous Bernhard H. Goetz vigilante drama that gripped this city five years ago, a three-time mugging victim is fighting to escape prosecution on a weapons charge after shooting an armed man who attempted to rob her and a friend.

Ysesnande Bureau, a 20-year-old Brooklyn woman who is known as Yvonne, has been dubbed “Lady Goetz” by the tabloid headline writers here.

She has even retained Goetz’s lawyer to defend her. “It is our intention not to lie down, but to fight,” attorney Barry Slotnick said Monday. “Yvonne fought back. She’s alive today because she did.”

Bureau told police that she and a friend, 19-year-old Theresa Jackson, were in Jackson’s car at an intersection last week when a gunman threw open the driver’s door and tried to grab Jackson’s purse and jewelry. Bureau pulled out her own gun and fired, wounding the mugger and sending him fleeing.

The incident took a bizarre turn moments later, when another car pulled up beside Bureau and Jackson, and Jackson was shot to death. The bullet that killed Jackson reportedly did not match the ones in Bureau’s .25 caliber pistol.

Bureau was arrested and charged with illegal possession of a firearm. She spent five days in jail before being freed on $500 cash bond, reduced from $2,500. Her family had contacted Roy Innis, national chairman of the Congress of Racial Equality, who obtained counsel for her and who is trying to rally public support.

“She would have rotted in jail,” Innis said.

The alleged thief, Clint Smith, was arrested hours after the incident, when he sought treatment for a head wound. He is being held on $75,000 cash bail, authorities said. However, police have not yet charged anyone in connection with Jackson’s death.

Slotnick said that Bureau began carrying a gun after she was repeatedly mugged. “She’s a decent, honest, law-abiding citizen,” he said.

If convicted of carrying a weapon illegally, Bureau could face up to seven years in prison. Slotnick noted that New York law imposes a mandatory jail sentence for illegal possession of a firearm but said he hopes to persuade the judge and prosecutors to make an exception in Bureau’s case.

“It’s Bernhard Goetz revisited,” Slotnick said.

Goetz, a white man who became a national figure after shooting four young blacks who, he said, were trying to rob him on a subway, was convicted of possessing an unlicensed handgun. He served eight months of a one-year sentence before being released last year.

However, Innis said, there is an important difference between the two incidents. The furor over the Goetz shooting was driven by “racial hype,” Innis said. In Bureau’s case, both the victims and alleged criminals were black.

“The fact is Bernie Goetz’s case only happens once in a while,” Innis said. “Yvonne Bureau’s happens all the time.”