KINGSTON – US Army Sergeant Junando Dawkins, a 29-year-old Newburgh resident, was arraigned in Kingston on Friday after a sealed indictment charged him with the January 2023 murder of Daniel Spotards in Plattekill. Dawkins was apprehended at Fort Bragg in North Carolina just before he deployed overseas with his unit.
Dawkins has been charged with felony murder and three felony counts of criminal possession of a weapon. After his arraignment, he was remanded to the Ulster County Jail without bail.
The indictment stems from a homicide investigation of Spottard’s death conducted by the New York State Police working with the Ulster County District Attorney’s Office, according to Chief Assistant District Attorney Emmanuel Nneji, the lead prosecutor in the case.
Daniel Spotards, a 41-year-old father of two, was found at the end of his Plattekill driveway on January 2, 2023, by a local sanitation worker who immediately called 911. The autopsy revealed that Spottard had been shot multiple times on New Year’s Day. Chief Assistant ADA Nneji said “The speed of this investigation and indictment is a testament to the tenacious attention to detail and around-the-clock work of our State Police investigators, whose dedication and expertise solved a murder in which the perpetrators had done all that they could to evade detection and arrest, adding “It is also an affirmation that solving violent crimes requires citizens to say something when they see something.”
