An arrest in a federal Treasury check scam may bring investigators closer to cracking the unsolved murder of 12-year-old Kade Lewin in Brooklyn, a killing that shook the city.
Reputed Crips member Jonah Luc has admitted to being in the Mercedes-Benz involved in the drive-by murder of Kade in 2022, according to a recent federal court filing. The revelation was detailed in an Aug. 22 letter asking Brooklyn Federal Magistrate Judge Vera Scanlon to hold Luc without bail — which she did.
“It seems like yesterday for me, every day,” Suzette Lewin, Kade’s mother, told the Daily News on Sunday.
“It’s 3½ years and I would love something to get done about it,” she said. “Ever since the loss, my life has to be the same.”
Luc, 24, is affiliated with the Insane Crip Gangsters, and rolls with the national gang’s Brooklyn chapter, the ICG Babiiez, according to federal prosecutors. His gang has engaged in a tit-for-tat war of retaliatory shootings with the 8 Trey Crips, and on March 31, 2022, he joined three of his fellow gang members to go on a shooting mission, the feds allege.
But their group apparently targeted the wrong parked car, and pumped 11 bullets into a black Toyota Corolla where Kade, relative Kylie Thompson, 8, and cousin Jenna Ellis, 20, were sitting, eating dinner and watching a video.
The barrage ended Kade’s life, and left Ellis wounded.
Suzette Lewin, mother of Kade Lewin, speaks at a ceremony to rename a street in his honor in June 2022. (Gardiner Anderson for New York Daily News)
Kade’s killing shook the city at the time, leading then-NYPD Commissioner Keechant Sewell to promise to use “every possible resource” to catch the culprits.
A few months later, the city renamed the stretch of Linden Blvd. where it happened after the seventh-grader.
The Toyota Corolla in which 12-year-old Kade Lewin was fatally shot is seen on Linden Boulevard and East 56th Street in Brooklyn on April 1, 2022. (Gardiner Anderson for New York Daily News)
Luc was arrested in August, and indicted last week on theft of government funds and aggravated identity theft charges. He has not been charged in connection with the murder.
A month earlier, a man expecting a $1,474.28 federal tax refund learned someone else had cashed the check in his name, and when a probation officer visited Luc’s Brooklyn apartment and found the check in a dresser drawer, federal prosecutors said. Luc was on probation for a 2023 shoplifting and conspiracy conviction in New Jersey.
At first, he lied and said the owner of the check was a friend who let him keep it, then changed his story again to say he found it on the ground, according to the criminal complaint against him. In the Aug. 22 letter, prosecutors describe the check theft as the kind of scam members of ICG Babiiez and other gangs often use to steal money.
And prosecutors linked Luc to Kade’s killing, describing how video surveillance shows him getting into and out of the Mercedes used in the shooting.
“The defendant has admitted to law enforcement that he was present inside the Mercedes-Benz at the time of the above-described murder,” prosecutors wrote.
Jonah Luc is pictured in surveillance footage on March 31, 2022, the day of the murder of Kade Lewin. (Court documents)
The court filing doesn’t say who fired the fatal shots, only that the bullets were fired through the sunroof.
“The defendant’s participation in the senseless killing of a 12-year-old boy in March 2022 is just one example of the violence ICG members and associates commit that endanger the lives of Brooklyn residents going about their everyday lives,” prosecutors wrote.
Luc also posted several pictures on social media asking for people to participate in a bank scamming scheme, as well as a photo of himself holding what looks like a gun with a blue laser sight, the feds allege. He also had two credit cards in someone else’s name when his probation officer visited him last month, the feds said.
Luc’s lawyer declined to comment.
