At around 10 p.m. on February 13, 1995, two men wearing black clothing robbed Terrell Strickland and Marlowe Traynham at gunpoint in the Arbor Hill section of Albany, New York.
Officers Christopher Boardman and William Warner with the Albany Police Department happened to be nearby and chased after the robbers, with Boardman following one of the suspects into a nearby playground. Officer Mike Colbert also came to the playground, just as the suspect fired at Boardman and Colbert. Boardman fired back, apparently hitting the suspect as he fled.
Anna DiDomenico, who lived on 254 Second Street, across from the playground, told police that she heard shots outside and went to her window to see what was happening. “I can’t be absolutely sure,” she said, “but I thought I heard one more ‘pop’ from the area of the park as this guy was trying to jump up and over the snowbank between the street and the sidewalk.” She said the man hit the snowbank and fell to the ground. “As he was getting up, he seemed to be grabbing his right hip or leg with his hand,” DiDomenico said. She described this person as a young Black man, between 17 and 25 years old, between 5’6” and 5’10” tall. She said he wore a black puffy jacket, a black wool hat, and dark pants.
Jahi Goodbee, who was walking in the neighborhood at the time of the incident, gave a similar account, telling police that he saw the man grab his leg, “as if he was injured.”
The police found what appeared to be a trail of blood not far from DiDomenico’s house that went west on Second Street, then turned on Thornton Street, becoming heavier at the intersection of Thornton and Third Street and continuing for another block. Investigators also found a glove with what appeared to be blood between the second and middle finger.
Two days later, Detective Michael Sbuttoni interviewed Eugene Morrow, who lived near the playground. Morrow said he saw Boardman chasing the suspect but that he didn’t know who shot at the officers. The next day, the police got a tip that Kareem McKnight, who also lived nearby, knew who was involved in the robbery and shooting. Officers questioned McKnight, but he said he didn’t know anything.
Also on February 16, Boardman viewed photographs of potential suspects. He identified Marquis Chandler as the shooter. Officers detained Chandler and took a blood sample to compare against the samples found at the crime scene. The testing excluded Chandler. Later, officers also tested the blood of Jamel Moore, and he, too, was excluded as a contributor.
The investigation stalled for more than a year until April 1996, when Detective Ken Wilcox began working on the case. Wilcox, who worked for the criminal investigative squad, was a seasoned officer, known on the streets as “Homicide.”
On April 10, Wilcox wrote in a report that he had left his card with a man named Michael Buckhanon in reference to the shooting. Buckhanon called back a few hours later and told Wilcox that McKnight had told him that two men—Raysheem and Nahiem—had been the robbers whom the police chased, and that “Nahiem got shot by the police.” Nahiem was the street name of 26-year-old Corey Young.
According to Wilcox’s report, Buckhanon also said that he had run into Young a few months after the shooting, and Young had told him he had been shot, although he did not say how the shooting happened.
Agents with the Drug Enforcement Administration arrested McKnight on June 5, 1996, and he was charged with a wide range of crimes, including burglary, assault, and sale of a controlled substance. According to a statement he signed during an interview with Wilcox and Detective Anthony Ryan, McKnight now said that he had run into Young and Michael Cancer on the day of the shooting. McKnight said the men told him they were “broke” and “about to get a quick vick.” McKnight said in the statement that he spoke the next day to Cancer, who told him they had robbed two kids and “got a coat out of it.”
The investigation continued.
Morrow was arrested on drug charges on September 2, 1997, and was re-interviewed by Wilcox and Ryan. In his signed statement, Morrow said that on the day of the shooting, Cancer came to his apartment, asked to borrow a sweatshirt, and said he and Young were getting ready to rob somebody. Morrow said that about 15 minutes later, he looked out his window and saw Young in a shootout with the police. He said he saw Young run towards Second Street, which was in line with the police account of the gunman’s escape route.
In addition, Damian Sanders told police on September 15, 1997, that he ran into Young a year or so after the shooting and that Young told him that he and McKnight were in the middle of robbing some people when the police arrived and a gunfight began. Sanders said, “[Young] said that he got touched, meaning he got shot by the police and while he was saying this, he kept rubbing his shoulder.” Sanders said that Young told him he received treatment for his injury at a hospital in North Carolina.
Wilcox and Ryan arrested Young on November 19, 1997, in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where he was living with his girlfriend.
After Young’s arrest, Ryan obtained statements from Lasharn Sanders, Samuel Recard, and Mark Johnson. In their statements, Lasharn Sanders and Recard each said Young had confessed to his role in the shooting and both statements said Young was wearing a sling on his arm. Recard said in his statement, “I know he got shot but he did not say much about it.”
In Johnson’s statement, made on February 3, 1998, he said that Young had confessed his involvement while they were in the Albany County Jail. According to Johnson, Young “said he was bleeding and the police got some of the blood that was in the snow and that the police would check the DNA.”
By the time Johnson made his statement, a grand jury in Albany County had indicted Young on two counts of attempted murder, two counts of aggravated assault, two counts of criminal possession of a weapon, two counts of reckless endangerment, and robbery.
Young had given a blood sample to be tested against the blood found at the crime scene, but that comparison had not been performed by the time of the indictment.
On May 26, 1998, the New York State Police Forensic Investigation Center reported that Young was excluded as a contributor to the sample.
On July 16, 1998, Paul Edwards, Young’s attorney, moved to dismiss the indictment. He said the state had presented testimony to the grand jury that described a suspect being shot and leaving a trail of blood in the snow. Other witnesses, such as Damien Sanders (now in prison for a manslaughter conviction), had testified that Young said he was shot during the incident.
Justice Thomas Breslin of Albany County Supreme Court denied the motion to dismiss.
Young’s trial began on August 4, 1998. Because of the DNA evidence, the state did not call several witnesses, including Johnson, who said that Young had told them the police had shot him.
Strickland and Traynham testified, but neither man identified Young as one of the robbers.
DiDomenico testified about what she saw outside her window. During cross-examination, she said she saw the suspect fall just after she heard gunfire. Goodbee testified that a few seconds after the gunfire, he saw a man stumble past his house, grabbing his leg.
Morrow testified that Young and Cancer had come to his apartment on the night of the shooting and borrowed a black hoodie and told him “they was going to get somebody.” He said that about 15 minutes later, he saw a police light outside his window and then saw an officer telling Young to get on the ground. Morrow initially said he heard shots but did not see who fired them. Cheryl Coleman, an assistant district attorney, reminded Morrow that he testified before the grand jury testimony that he saw Young firing.
During cross-examination, Morrow testified that he hadn’t named Young to curry favor with officials after his arrest in 1997.
McKnight testified consistently with his statement to the police. He also testified that he had not named Young in exchange for favorable treatment after his arrest.
Recard testified that Young told him in the winter of 1995 that he had been in “some type of stick-up” and “the police rolled up on him” and “he started shooting at them and started jumping over the fence.”
Recard testified that Young’s arm was in a sling when they spoke, but that Young did not say why he was wearing the sling. Recard was also facing criminal charges at the time of the trial, and he testified that he had not received any offers for favorable treatment in exchange for his testimony.
Boardman testified about the night of the shootout. He said it was dark, and that he didn’t really get a good look at the suspect’s face. He testified about looking at mugshots and selecting a person who was excluded through an alibi and DNA evidence. “Unfortunately, at this point, I can’t identify the person that shot at me, and at that point when I was making the identification, I had been trying very hard because of the incident to make an ID, and I had made a mistake,” he said.
Keith Carroll, a detective with the Albany Police Department’s Forensic Investigation Unit, testified about the crime-scene investigation. He said that although police initially believed there was a trail of blood left by the suspect, the testing of these substances left in the snow and on the ground found evidence of blood in only one instance, outside the house at 262 Second Street.
After Carroll testified, Coleman sought to introduce an expert witness to testify about blood spatter. She said, “I anticipate that he would testify that the stain that he examined, the photograph in front of 262, would have had to have been left by an individual who was not in motion, as he would explain the difference in the patterns that would be left by a moving source and by a stationary source.”
Edwards objected, saying that Coleman had not provided any discovery regarding this witness or his findings. Coleman pushed back and said the idea of presenting expert testimony on blood spatter had only come to her at the start of the trial. In addition, she said Edwards had access to the photographs that the expert witness was using as the basis for his testimony.
Justice Breslin told Coleman that he would allow Coleman to present this evidence, but he also said she would have to delay its presentation to allow Edwards to properly prepare. “I find this notice to be very unfair to the defense, and you may not have violated the letter of the law, but certainly the spirit is defeated in terms of the results that’s achieved here,” he said.
The expert witness never testified.
Ryan and Wilcox each testified about the investigation, and how they worked the case and the witnesses that led them to Young. Ryan testified that after his arrest, Young said—without being told the reason for his arrest—that he did not shoot at the officers and was at St. Peter’s Hospital at the time of the shooting.
Both said that McKnight, Morrow, and Recard had voluntarily made statements inculpating Young and had not been fed any details of the case.
Victoria Crocco, a nurse at St. Peter’s Hospital, testified that hospital records showed that Young visited the hospital on February 13, 1995, for treatment for an infection. She said the records indicated he checked in at 3:05 p.m. and was discharged at 4:15 p.m. Under cross-examination, Crocco said she did not know what time Young actually left the hospital.
Young did not testify. Dr. Allison Eastman testified for the defense about Young’s exclusion from the blood sample found at the crime scene.
During his closing argument, Edwards reminded jurors that Boardman had positively identified another suspect. He also said that DiDomenico and Goodbee had each testified to seeing the suspect stumble away, apparently after being shot. Edwards also said the state’s three key witnesses—McKnight, Morrow, and Recard—lacked credibility because each made a statement after being arrested for other crimes.
Most importantly, said Edwards, was Young’s exclusion as the source of the blood found in the snow. “The people have not presented any evidence that the blood came from anywhere else, and the evidence that’s been presented in this trial doesn’t suggest any possible source for that blood except the shooter,” he said.
In her closing argument, Coleman said it wasn’t the state’s burden to show whose blood was in the snow or why police never found the weapon used to shoot at the officers. “If I had to prove that to you and be held to that standard, then I might as well have taken the day off, blow the day off and go up to the Great Escape with my 5-year-old again,” she said. Coleman said the state’s witnesses testified truthfully, and Young had no alibi for the time of the shooting.
On August 7, 1998, the jury convicted Young on all counts. He was sentenced to 57 years and 6 months in prison.
Young appealed, arguing that Justice Breslin should have excluded testimony by Morrow and McKnight about statements made by Cancer, because they were hearsay. He also challenged the severity of his sentence. The New York Supreme Court’s Appellate Division, Third Department, affirmed the conviction on July 3, 2002. It said the statements were exceptions to hearsay exclusions because Cancer was not available. The appellate court also reduced Young’s sentence to a minimum of 32 years and 6 months in prison. (Available records don’t indicate whether Cancer was ever charged or arrested in the incident.)
Wilcox died in a single-car accident on April 29, 2006. In 2007, the Times Union newspaper in Albany revealed that Wilcox and another man, Aaron Dare, started a business in 2001 to buy and flip real estate that reaped them millions of dollars, but the profits were the result of mortgage fraud. At the time of his death, Wilcox was under investigation and about to be indicted. Dare was convicted and sentenced to prison. Wilcox was also involved in the wrongful convictions of Alfonso Davis, Carl Dukes, and Lavell Jones.
On October 21, 2024, McKnight recanted his trial testimony. He said in an affidavit that he was taken to an interrogation room after his arrest in 1996. Wilcox walked in. “He said he already knew everything about the shooting,” McKnight said. “He said I could either help him out or go down for the robbery myself. I had a child on the way and gave in and agreed to help him.” McKnight said he signed a statement prepared by Wilcox. “It was not from me. It is false.”
Morrow recanted a month later, on November 19, 2024. He said that after his arrest, Wilcox and Ryan told him that his grandmother might be arrested for harboring a fugitive and Morrow might lose his son. “I was scared for my family and signed the statement,” Morrow said. “The detectives prepared it for me. They provided the information that went into it—not me. They just kept grilling and threatening me until I eventually gave in.”
Recard recanted on May 2, 2025. He said Wilcox and Ryan visited him in prison and said he would be charged with attempted murder if he did not help them out. Recard said he had no choice but to sign the statement. “All of the information in the statement they prepared for me came from them–and none of it was true.”
On March 19, 2026, attorneys Joshua Kelner and Don Savatta moved to vacate Young’s conviction, based on the recantations and the tarnished records of Ryan and Wilcox in similar investigations.
The motion said that Young was innocent and the evidence used to convict him was weak. No physical or forensic evidence connected Young to the crime, and he had no history of violence. Boardman had identified someone else as the suspect. The state’s case relied on three witnesses, all of whom had recanted.
“Wilcox and Ryan were the only officers to whom anyone ever purportedly implicated Corey Young,” the motion said. “If Young was, in fact, freely discussing the crime with numerous people … in a case where countless detectives were involved in the investigation, how is it that only Wilcox and Ryan happened to take statements to that effect? The answer to this question is obvious: it is because the statements were fabricated to fit Wilcox’s and Ryan’s narrative and were false.”
On April 13, 2026, the state joined in the motion to vacate Young’s conviction. It said, “The totality of the circumstances now present show that the verdict convicting the defendant is unreliable and as a matter of fundamental fairness, the conviction should be vacated.”
Later that day, Judge William Little granted the motion to vacate the convictions and to dismiss the charges against Young, releasing him after he had served nearly 28 years in prison.
Albany County District Attorney Lee Kindlon told the Times Union that after reviewing the case, his office determined that Young was likely innocent.
“We read the paperwork, the witnesses recanted, the blood didn't match the defendant on scene,” Kindlon said. “We came to the conclusion that he did not likely get a fair trial.”
In August 2026, Young filed a federal civil-rights lawsuit against the city of Albany seeking compensation for his wrongful conviction.
– Ken Otterbourg
Posting Date: 04-28-2026
Last Update Date: 08-21-2026
