Four people — including a family member — have been arrested for gunning down a 32-year-old Bronx ex-con who served six years in prison for killing a rival who had taken a shot at him, police said Saturday.
Two shooters may have been involved in Thursday’s clash inside the E. 231st St. apartment near Laconia Ave. in Laconia, during which victim Xavier “Zay” Goodson was fatally shot in the eye.
Shell casings from two separate firearms were found at the scene when cops arrived, a police source with knowledge of the case said. It wasn’t immediately disclosed which of the four suspects pulled the triggers.
Those arrested include Jahiem Pasco, 22, Jaire Drakes, 20, Naesean Jackson, 20, and Kelvin Woods, 20, cops said. All four are facing murder, manslaughter and weapons possession charges.
Jackson lives in Connecticut, cops said. The other three reside in the Bronx. Their arraignment in Bronx Criminal Court was pending Saturday.
Relatives identified Drakes as Goodson’s cousin. The two lived together on E. 231st St., they said.
“I just can’t get my head around it,” Goodson’s uncle Altonio Reid, 58, said about the murder Thursday.
When shots rang out at 4 p.m., a group of young men were seen jumping out of a bedroom window and running to the nearby Edenwald Houses.
When cops arrived on the scene, they discovered Goodson suffering from gunshot wounds to his head, buttocks and abdomen. Medics rushed him to Jacobi Medical Center, but he could not be saved.
Police rounded up six men and took them into custody. Two were let go after questioning.
A motive for the killing was not immediately disclosed.
Drakes had been flopping at Goodson’s apartment. The ex-con had complained to relatives that his cousin didn’t do anything but invite his friends over to the place and smoke weed. Those complaints could have been the basis of the fatal clash, family members believe.
In 2016 Goodson was convicted of manslaughter for killing 17-year-old Antonio Lyles three years earlier when Lyles opened fire at him and his pals at the Edenwald Houses.
Lyles didn’t hit anyone. Goodson and his outraged friend chased the shooter for seven blocks before viciously beating him for five minutes, witnesses told The New York Times at the time. At one point, someone repeatedly bashed Lyles head with a large rock.
The teen died after clinging to life for 13 hours. Two others were arrested with Goodson for the killing.
The Bronx resident was paroled in March 2022, state Department of Corrections records show.
Police said Goodson was arrested for choking someone a few months after his release. But relatives said the ex-con had turned his life around and was planning to leave the city with his fiancée and two daughters.
Goodson enjoyed working out and had dreams of opening a physical fitness business, relatives said.
Reid, his uncle, an ex-Marine, remembered Goodson as “a good kid” trying to get his life together.
“He came to visit his mother all the time,” Reid said. “He was on the right path. He was doing well. He looked good and he wasn’t doing anything stupid.”
