The shooting death of Tommy Speed in the hallway of the Lenox Street Housing Development two years ago was part of a rival drug dealer’s “business plan,” the top homicide prosecutor in Suffolk County said today at the start of that man’s murder trial.

GARRETT “G-WHIZ” JACKSON (D.O.B. 7/13/87) is charged with first-degree murder for allegedly shooting Speed in the back of the head on the night of Feb. 11, 2009 – an act, Assistant District Attorney Edmond Zabin said, that was committed to “eliminate the competition.”

Zabin used his opening statement to recall Speed as “a family man … the kind of man who would give you some money, the kind of man who would bring you some food.”

Speed was also a drug dealer – “the most successful crack cocaine dealer on Lenox Street,” Zabin said. In that capacity, he sold drugs at the street level and at wholesale prices to Jackson and his associates.
But the product that Speed sold to Jackson was inferior, Zabin said, “and the defendant was angry about that. Customers were leaving the defendant’s crew for Tommy Speed. And the defendant saw that as money out of his pocket.”

On the night of Feb. 11, the prosecutor said, Jackson did something about it.

“Ready to execute his business plan, he walked up behind Tommy Speed, put a 9mm semiautomatic handgun to the back of his head, and pulled the trigger,” Zabin said. Speed was killed instantly.

There were few leads at first, Zabin said, but something unusual began to unfold when “people who respected Tommy Speed, people who would normally run from the police, would never, ever talk to police, came forward to provide evidence. And that evidence points in one and only one direction.”
Zabin warned jurors that they wouldn’t have DNA or trace evidence to assist them.

“This isn’t a one-hour made-for-TV crime drama,” the prosecutor said. “These are the cold hard streets of the Lenox Street projects.”

Catherine Yuan is the DA’s assigned victim-witness advocate. Jackson is represented by attorney Barry Wilson. Prosecution testimony is ongoing before Judge Patrick Brady in courtroom 815 of Suffolk Superior Court.