Brown
Speights
GOSHEN – Jauntae Brown, the Spring Valley man who has been charged with stabbing Justin Speights to death during a New Year’s party on the morning of January 1, 2016, pled guilty in Orange County Court Wednesday to a charge of manslaughter.
The plea was negotiated and will result in Brown, 20, being sentenced to the maximum allowable by law of five to 15 years in state prison.
Speights, who was a well-loved Silver Lake firefighter in the Town of Wallkill, was trying to break up a fight outside a Crawford home where the party was taking place, when Brown pulled out a knife and stabbed him twice, killing him.
As the investigation began, the murder weapon could not be found, so members of the Silver Lake Fire Department began to search Route 302 in the Circleville area and found the knife tossed off the side of the road some seven miles from the murder scene at 52 Paddock Drive.
District Attorney David Hoovler had praise for those firefighters.
“I have to give a lot of credit to Silver Lake and the men and women there or going out and finding it. It is one of the few cases in my career where you find a piece of evidence seven miles away that has usable DNA on it and another amazing factor about is that if it would have been out there another day or so, the weather turned very shortly after that. That is a credit to the State Police FIU Unit and the men and women who work here,” the DA said.
Hoovler described the scene at the party as “a melee going on virtually the whole evening.” He said the partygoers were all underage with alcohol and drugs running rampant and no adult supervision.
The DA’s office is considering filing charges under the county’s social host law that places responsibility for underage drinking at a private residence on the owner or renter of that property.
