Final defendant convicted in 2022 violence spree, involving deaths of two men and a Rochester officer
A jury Friday convicted the last of three men accused of being at the epicenter of two nights of violence in 2022 that claimed the lives of two city men and a Rochester police officer.
The jury convicted Raheim Robinson, 21, of the July 20, 2022 murders of Richard Collinge and MyJel Rand, the attempted murder of another city man, arson and multiple weapons-related charges. The jury deliberated for two days.
Earlier, Deadrick Fulwiley, 34, pleaded guilty to the murders.
"Involved in days of nonstop violence, Raheim Robinson and Deadrick Fulwiley terrorized the community with gun violence, arson, and murder," Monroe County District Attorney Sandra Doorley said in a statement.
Last year, a jury convicted Kelvin Vickers Jr., 23, of the same murders, as well as the July 21, 2022 murder of Rochester Police Officer Anthony Mazurkiewicz, who was conducting undercover surveillance in response to the escalating violence.
Neither Robinson nor Fulwiley "considered the value of human life when they made the choice to murder these two young men, which led to events involving the murder of Officer Mazurkiewicz at the hands of Kelvin Vickers," First Assistant District Attorney Perry Duckles, a prosecutor in the criminal cases, said in a statement.
Like Vickers, Robinson is alleged to have been recruited from Boston in 2022 to provide enforcement to one faction in a drug turf war that violently consumed a few blocks of a northeast Rochester neighborhood over several days.
Others allegedly involved in the marijuana trafficking are now facing criminal charges in federal court.
The prosecution relied heavily on ballistics evidence connecting three separate guns to the murders, videos that Duckles argued showed the accused in vehicles to and from crime scenes, and videos of Robinson with the guns allegedly used in the crimes.
Defense lawyer Joseph Damelio countered that there was no eyewitness identification of Robinson and that "compilation" surveillance videos, which tracked the car used in the crimes, included multiple gaps.
"They didn't have continuous surveillance," Damelio said after the verdicts Friday.
Those gaps raised questions of Robinson's guilt, Damelio said.
Robinson is scheduled to be sentenced on May 31 and Fulwiley on May 17, both before Monroe County Court Judge Julie Hahn.
This article originally appeared on Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: Raheim Robinson convicted in deaths of Richard Collinge and MyJel Rand
