NYPost

WHY WAS SLAIN THIEF ON STREET?

By MURRAY WEISS and JOE CUNNINGHAM

May 9, 2001 -- The crackhead crook allegedly killed by a furious neighbor was in and out of jail for 25 years - yet hardly off the streets for more than a few weeks at a time, records show.

Cops reviewing Kevin Bethea's one-man crime wave were amazed how one judge after another transformed the 41-year-old Bronx man into a poster boy for revolving-door justice.

"The question is, ‘Why was this guy on the streets?'" one top cop said.

Bethea's criminal record dates back to 1976 and shows he rarely spent more than a handful of days behind bars after most of his 54 arrests - mainly for breaking into cars, using drugs and committing robberies.

He was sentenced to one to three years in 1983, a year in 1990, and seven months each in 1996 and 1997. But mostly, Bethea got sentences ranging from 15 days to 90 days.

In the past two years alone, Bethea was arrested seven times - and judges routinely ignored his already voluminous record by sentencing him to five days in jail after virtually every collar.

At the time of his slaying, Bethea had been freed yet again after an arrest two weeks earlier for breaking into another car with burglary tools.

According to investigators, a brooding Victor Vicenty, a 54-year-old, part-time school-bus driver, put an end to the crime wave - just two days after he believed Bethea broke into his car.

Investigators said Vicenty, hooded and carrying an unregistered rifle, watched from a bench in a grassy area across from his Soundview apartment early Monday as Bethea broke into one car - then into Vicenty's car.

As Bethea sat in the driver's seat of Vicenty's car, Vicenty "at close range, probably 10 feet," fired the rifle twice at Bethea through the windshield and once through the window on the driver's side, an investigator said.

Vicenty then allegedly began chasing the bleeding Bethea as he stumbled away. Bethea collapsed in front of an apartment house where a security guard called cops.

"[Vicenty] obviously caught him red-handed and did justice," said one police source.

A close friend of Vicenty's, who identified herself only as Norma, said she relies on Vicenty to help her with everything from her medical condition. - "he comes over whenever I have a problem, he's taken me to the hospital" - to her reading lessons.

"We hope and pray he gets off without too much time in jail," she told The Post.

Some neighbors sympathized with Bethea, calling him a "legend" and his death a tragedy.

But law-enforcement records suggest he was far from a sympathetic character.

According to those documents, Bethea, who used six aliases, was arrested 28 times for drug use, nine times for burglary, eight for larceny, twice for robbery and seven times for assault, sometimes with a deadly weapon.

Not all of his offenses were nonviolent.

March 27, he was charged with kicking a woman in the stomach and threatening to kill her.

On April 29, 2000, he punched a woman in the face and tried to stab her with a screwdriver.

-- Anonymous, May 09, 2001

Answers

If he hadn't run away he might have survived. hard to say with certainty since the story does not describe his wounds, but a moving shooting victim has less chance of surviving the wounds since the medics can't catch up to him.

I hope the Vicenty guy doesn't get a lot of hassle for the shooting, even though he used excessive force when his life wasn't in immediate danger. If more citizens were armed, the crime rate would drop,as has been proven many times.

This is one instance where that proof is very evident. the one man crime wave has ended.

-- Anonymous, May 09, 2001