Raised in the Ladera Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles, Brandon Lincoln Woodard, the son of wealthy parents lived a privileged life. His uncle Leonard Woods was a celebrated drag car racer and his mother, Sandra Wellington, ran a successful mortgage business. Mr. Woodard in 1999 graduated from a private Episcopal high school in LA called Campbell Hall. He and his parents belonged to an exclusive society of prominent black families called Jack and Jill of America.
In 2003 Brandon Woodard graduated from southern California's Loyola Marymount University with a bachelor's degree in business administration. While working in his mother's mortgage company (shut down in the summer of 2012 for state lending code violations) he cultivated fast-living friends in the music business and in professional sports. He developed a reputation as a man about town.
Between 2004 and 2012 Brandon Woodard acquired a criminal history consisting of at least twenty arrests. A supermarket security guard in Hermosa Beach, California caught him stealing several bottles of wine in 2009. After struggling with the security officer Mr. Woodard sped off in his car, but in so doing, he slammed into two other vehicles. To flee the scene he abandoned his disabled car and hailed a cab. The police took him into custody shortly after the incident. (I don't know the disposition of this case but would guess that Mr. Woodard pleaded no contest and paid a fine.)
A year after the retail theft incident Woodard was accepted into Whittier Law School. During his first year at Whittier he was arrested on the charge of battery. (In most states this offense is called assault.) In April 2012 while the 31-year-old was enrolled in law school police arrested him in West Hollywood for cocaine possession. By now Brandon Woodard was holding himself out as a hip hop promoter in LA's music industry.
On Sunday, December 9, 2012 Brandon Woodard flew from Los Angeles to New York City. At five in the afternoon he checked into a high-end hotel on Columbus Circle in midtown Manhattan called 6 Columbus. He planned to return to LA the next day to take a law exam. That evening he watched a football game at the hotel with a female friend then went to dinner at a restaurant nearby.
Just before two in the afternoon on Monday, December 10, 2012 Woodard checked out of his hotel. He left his luggage with a valet expecting to return for it in a couple of hours. Brandon Woodard never got back to the hotel.
As Brandon Woodard walked along 58th Street that afternoon not far from the southern border of Central Park a man wearing a hooded jacket walked up behind him and shot him once in the back of the head with a nickel-plated pistol. As Woodward collapsed to the pavement and died, the shooter climbed into a Lincoln sedan and was driven away. The murder was captured by a surveillance camera that did not reveal a clear picture of the gunman's face.
Crime scene investigators recovered a spent shell casing that had been fired out of a 9 mm semi-automatic pistol. A search of a ballistics database revealed that the handgun that had ejected this casing had been used in a November 22, 2009 shooting in Queens, New York. In that incident no one had been hit and no arrests had been made.
At the time of his death Brandon Woodard was in possession of three cellphones. This, along with the fact that he associated with music industry types led investigators to speculate that he had been somehow involved in the drug trade. The shooting M.O. also bore the earmarks of a murder-for-hire conspiracy.
On December 11, 2012, the day after Woodard's murder, NYPD officers with the 113th Precinct in Queens came across the abandoned getaway car. They traced the Lincoln MKZ to an Avis car rental service in Huntington Station, New York.
New York City detectives on December 13, 2012 searched Woodard's condo in Los Angeles. According to newspaper reports the officers did not find drugs or useful clues into the identities of the people behind his murder.
In July 2017 a Manhattan jury, after a three month trial, found 39-year-old Lloyd T. McKenzie guilty of hiring a hit man to murder Brandon Woodard. McKenzie, a party organizer from Queens, New York, arranged the murder to avoid paying Woodard the $161,000 he owned for five kilograms of cocaine. (Woodard had been working as a drug courier for a bicoastal cocaine ring.) The judge sentenced McKenzie to 85 years to life.
As of this writing the hit man in Brandon Woodard's murder remains unidentified.
In 2003 Brandon Woodard graduated from southern California's Loyola Marymount University with a bachelor's degree in business administration. While working in his mother's mortgage company (shut down in the summer of 2012 for state lending code violations) he cultivated fast-living friends in the music business and in professional sports. He developed a reputation as a man about town.
Between 2004 and 2012 Brandon Woodard acquired a criminal history consisting of at least twenty arrests. A supermarket security guard in Hermosa Beach, California caught him stealing several bottles of wine in 2009. After struggling with the security officer Mr. Woodard sped off in his car, but in so doing, he slammed into two other vehicles. To flee the scene he abandoned his disabled car and hailed a cab. The police took him into custody shortly after the incident. (I don't know the disposition of this case but would guess that Mr. Woodard pleaded no contest and paid a fine.)
A year after the retail theft incident Woodard was accepted into Whittier Law School. During his first year at Whittier he was arrested on the charge of battery. (In most states this offense is called assault.) In April 2012 while the 31-year-old was enrolled in law school police arrested him in West Hollywood for cocaine possession. By now Brandon Woodard was holding himself out as a hip hop promoter in LA's music industry.
On Sunday, December 9, 2012 Brandon Woodard flew from Los Angeles to New York City. At five in the afternoon he checked into a high-end hotel on Columbus Circle in midtown Manhattan called 6 Columbus. He planned to return to LA the next day to take a law exam. That evening he watched a football game at the hotel with a female friend then went to dinner at a restaurant nearby.
Just before two in the afternoon on Monday, December 10, 2012 Woodard checked out of his hotel. He left his luggage with a valet expecting to return for it in a couple of hours. Brandon Woodard never got back to the hotel.
As Brandon Woodard walked along 58th Street that afternoon not far from the southern border of Central Park a man wearing a hooded jacket walked up behind him and shot him once in the back of the head with a nickel-plated pistol. As Woodward collapsed to the pavement and died, the shooter climbed into a Lincoln sedan and was driven away. The murder was captured by a surveillance camera that did not reveal a clear picture of the gunman's face.
Crime scene investigators recovered a spent shell casing that had been fired out of a 9 mm semi-automatic pistol. A search of a ballistics database revealed that the handgun that had ejected this casing had been used in a November 22, 2009 shooting in Queens, New York. In that incident no one had been hit and no arrests had been made.
At the time of his death Brandon Woodard was in possession of three cellphones. This, along with the fact that he associated with music industry types led investigators to speculate that he had been somehow involved in the drug trade. The shooting M.O. also bore the earmarks of a murder-for-hire conspiracy.
On December 11, 2012, the day after Woodard's murder, NYPD officers with the 113th Precinct in Queens came across the abandoned getaway car. They traced the Lincoln MKZ to an Avis car rental service in Huntington Station, New York.
New York City detectives on December 13, 2012 searched Woodard's condo in Los Angeles. According to newspaper reports the officers did not find drugs or useful clues into the identities of the people behind his murder.
In July 2017 a Manhattan jury, after a three month trial, found 39-year-old Lloyd T. McKenzie guilty of hiring a hit man to murder Brandon Woodard. McKenzie, a party organizer from Queens, New York, arranged the murder to avoid paying Woodard the $161,000 he owned for five kilograms of cocaine. (Woodard had been working as a drug courier for a bicoastal cocaine ring.) The judge sentenced McKenzie to 85 years to life.
As of this writing the hit man in Brandon Woodard's murder remains unidentified.
The reason all of his court dispositions are hard to locate is that his mother would hire attorney friends to backdoor deals in the courtrooms.
ReplyDeleteDrug police killed Woodard that's y police won't find the killer n why media hasn't reported updates. Ask Raymond kelly
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