A parks employee for New York City has been indicted on charges including murder as a hate crime for allegedly shooting and killing a Venezuelan migrant living within an encampment inside a Bed-Stuy playground, a prosecutor said Wednesday.
Officials say Elijah Mitchell, 23, of Queens, was upset that migrants were living in Brooklyn’s Steuben Playground, which he was assigned to clean as a temporary assignment.
On July 18, Mitchell reportedly started yelling and ripping off tarps at the encampment when Arturo Jose Rodriguez-Marcano, 30, from Venezuela, confronted him and they argued, prosecutors said. Mitchell then went to a vehicle and returned with a gun in his waistband, which he showed to Rodriguez-Marcano before being pulled away by other park employees, according to officials.
Three days later on July 21, officials allege Mitchell came back to the park and shot Rodriguez-Marcano in the chest.
“This premeditated and coldblooded homicide is outrageous on many levels, not least because the alleged motive was hatred towards new arrivals to our city,” Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez said in a statement.
Mitchell is charged in the indictment with second-degree murder as a hate crime, second-degree murder, illegal possession of a weapon, menacing as a hate crime and menacing, prosecutors said.
In an interview with the NYPD, which was made public as part of an initial disclosure from prosecutors following the arraignment, THE CITY reported, Mitchell admitted he argued with the migrants at the encampment on July 18, but denied having a gun or shooting Rodriguez-Marcano. He said he was in the park on the night of the killing, but was peeing when he heard the gunshots.
“I go to work, I cut grass, and that’s it. No I don’t have a problem with the migrants,” he told NYPD detectives, without a lawyer, following his July 29 arrest. “I didn’t have a gun the night I heard the pop. No dudes came at me, nothing. I took a piss, I heard some sh-t, and I got up out of there.”
Mitchell said he was also homeless despite working two jobs at the park and a homeless shelter. He said he was currently living in his car and trying to support his 7-year-old daughter as best he could, who he described as “my world.”
“If I have a problem, it’s with the government,” he said, according to the transcript of his interrogation. “That’s the people who let them in here. I work seven days a week. I don’t have time to let a migrant f-ck up what I got going on in my life. They’re trying to fix their life.”
On Wednesday, he pleaded not guilty during a court appearance. Bail was set at $350,000 cash or $2.5 million bond, and he was ordered to return to court on Oct. 23. If convicted, he faces 25 years to life in prison.
Rodriguez-Marcano’s sister spoke to THE CITY about her brother’s reported killing, but declined to share her name.
“My brother was a happy person, charismatic, and calm, with a future ahead of him,” she said in a WhatsApp message in Spanish last week. “He embarked on a journey for the American dream where his life was taken by a hate crime. Xenophobia.”
