Westbury man in police brutality case guilty in separate case

A Westbury man at the center of 2014 police brutality allegations that led to a Nassau officer’s acquittal pleaded guilty to a felony Wednesday in a separate case and will be going to prison.

The Nassau district attorney’s office said Kyle Howell, 23, pleaded guilty in Nassau County Court to a second-degree assault charge after an arrest last year on robbery, assault, weapon and drug possession charges.

Under the plea, a judge said he would sentence Howell to 2 years in prison and 3 years of post-release supervision, prosecutors said Thursday.

Howell’s attorney, Kevin Kearon of Garden City, declined to comment on the case Thursday, saying it would be inappropriate for him to do so before his client’s sentencing.

Nassau police arrested Howell last April, charging him with robbing two people of $400 at knife point during an alleged drug deal in Great Neck Plaza in April 2016.

Police said at the time that Howell met a man and a woman in a car to sell them drugs, but got in the vehicle’s back seat and held a knife to the man’s throat, demanding money.

Howell then cut the male’s hands when he tried to push him away, before the woman gave Howell money and he fled, authorities have said.

Police found Howell with 17 Xanax pills and a bag of cocaine when they later arrested him, according to court documents, which also said Howell denied ownership of the drugs.

Howell said publicly after his April 19 arrest he was “being framed,” an allegation Nassau police denied.

Records show a federal lawsuit Howell previously filed against the county and two Nassau police officers is pending. He has alleged he was the victim of police brutality during an April 2014 traffic stop that a store’s surveillance camera caught on video.

In 2015, a Nassau judge acquitted police Officer Vincent LoGiudice of assault charges after a trial in which prosecutors had alleged he beat Howell during that Westbury car stop.

Howell still faces two misdemeanor drug charges from a November 2016 arrest, court records show. In that case, police charged him with criminal possession of a controlled substance in the seventh degree and fifth-degree marijuana possession.

Court records show Howell also faces a misdemeanor drug possession charge from a January arrest in Westbury when police said they found a glass pipe containing what appeared to be cannabis wax in his car.