Bellport man get 25 years for manslaughter

Before he was sentenced Tuesday to 25 years in prison, a Bellport man heard about the cruel wreckage left behind after he shot an East Patchogue man to death in his backyard during a burglary in 2007.

Carlton Shaw, 38, died on his lawn after Terraine Slide, now 20, shot him. Shaw's son, Carlton Jr., then 3, was found sleeping on his father's body.

Since their father's death, Shaw's two children are still too scared to sleep in their own beds, Assistant District Attorney Nancy Clifford said.

"Carlton [Jr.] still looks for his father to come home, even though he knows he will not," Clifford said. When Shaw's birthday comes, the family bakes a cake and celebrates to keep his spirit alive.

But the house that Shaw held on to by working three chef jobs is about to be lost to foreclosure without his income.

"I don't know what's going to happen, but I hope God will take us to a good place," Shaw's widow, Griselda Amaya, said through an interpreter outside court. Their children did not attend because it was their first day of school.

Slide pleaded guilty in May to first-degree manslaughter in the death of Shaw, a Jamaican immigrant. He had earlier been convicted of murder in the case, but a state appellate court reversed the conviction last year, saying state Supreme Court Justice Robert W. Doyle improperly allowed the prosecutor to ask Slide about previous arrests.

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Doyle called the shooting "a brutal and senseless murder. I hope this defendant will think the rest of his life of these children and the family he destroyed."

Slide did not speak in court, but his attorney, Jason Bassett, said Slide feels deep remorse for what he did.

At the time of the plea, Slide said he went to Shaw's house with four friends intending to burglarize it. One of them, Christopher Overton, had a gun, Slide said. He said he took that gun and shot Shaw.

Overton, 18, of East Patchogue, was one of the teenagers arrested months later in the hate-crime killing of Ecuadorean immigrant Marcelo Lucero in Patchogue. He is serving 6 years in the Lucero killing. He pleaded guilty to burglary in the Shaw killing, for which he is serving 2 to 6 years.