Wahid Elawame, 39 from Steinway Street was found guilty on the 6th of April for second degree murder and will serve 25 years to life in prison.

The verdict was well received after news of the crime began to circulate. 

It happened at around 11:30pm on May 4th, 2012. Elawame was in his apartment entertaining three other men. After a night of casual interaction, Mrwan Said and the other two men he was with tried to leave Elawame's apartment. However, Elawame refused to let them go. He then took out a knife and began to stab and slash Said to death, according to QNS. 

The other two men quickly fled the apartment by jumping from the window onto the roof of Layali Beirut, the restaurant on the ground floor. 

After police were called, they entered the apartment of Elawame only to find him sitting casually on his couch and smoking a cigarette in front of the lifeless body of Said who lay in a pool of his own blood, with puncture wounds to his hands and chest. 

Of the crime and the victim, the Queens District Attorney Richard A. Brown said this, “this was an especially violent crime in which the defendant refused to allow three men who were visiting him in his apartment to leave………Last month a jury convicted the defendant and the court has now sentenced him to a lengthy term behind bars that will protect society and punish him for needlessly killing another man.”