Bensonhurst Man Cleared of One Murder Count

A sharply divided jury acquitted a young white man Tuesday of intentionally murdering a black teen-ager in a racial attack in Bensonhurst. But it failed to resolve a second murder count and a riot charge against him.

The jury, in its ninth day of deliberations, convicted John Vento of two counts of unlawful imprisonment and four counts of menacing for his role in the attack, which inflamed racial tensions in New York City.

Two other young whites have been convicted in the assault on 16-year-old Yusuf Hawkins, who was shot to death Aug. 23. Hawkins had come to the predominantly white Brooklyn neighborhood to buy a used car.

Vento, who reneged on an immunity deal that would have had him testify against his co-defendants, faces a September retrial on the unresolved charges, including a charge of murder by depraved indifference, prosecutors said.

He could be sentenced to a year and four months to four years on the unlawful imprisonment counts and 90 days on each menacing count. Sentencing will be Aug. 14.

The 21-year-old sat silently, occasionally flashing a tight smile, as the verdicts were read. He was acquitted of intentional murder, a weapons possession charge, one count of unlawful imprisonment and five counts of discrimination.

“There’s a difference between racism, which is not illegal, and discrimination, which is,” said juror Lee Levin.

Levin, one of the two holdouts for a murder conviction, said that the disagreement on that count was over Vento’s mental culpability.

Juror Irwin Ziegler said the deliberations were “not very nice. . . . It was very tense, very emotional, a lot of yelling and screaming.”

Last Friday, the mothers of Vento and Hawkins had an emotional meeting at the courthouse in which Maria Vento offered condolences to Diane Hawkins, New York Newsday reported Tuesday. Hawkins’ father, Moses Stewart, said it was “the beginning of the healing process” between blacks and whites in New York.