Rockville Centre gang members get 75 years to life

Two local men who police describe as gang members, convicted last March in the fatal shooting of a Yonkers woman, were sentenced on June 28 to 75 years to life in prison.

Charles Parsley, 28, and Kasaun White, 29, both of Rockville Centre, were found guilty of killing Sandra Hackley, 36, and wounding her husband, Rafael Cornielle, 31, and her 12-year-old daughter in April 2010. Parsley and White were convicted of second-degree murder, second-degree attempted murder, first-degree assault and first-degree burglary.

“These defendants planned and carried out the murder of a woman, the shooting of her husband and 12-year-old daughter, then calmly left the crime scene and were driven off, all as residents in the community were in and around the area,” Westchester County District Attorney Janet DiFiore said after the verdicts were announced. “The meticulous crime scene analysis, aggressive follow-up on numerous leads and shoe-leather investigative work by detectives from the Yonkers Police Department are what led to these two defendants, their subsequent arrests and today’s convictions.”

An investigation by Yonkers police led them to Rockville Centre, where White and Parsley were arrested in an early-morning raid at the Rockville Centre Housing Authority complex on Centre Avenue a month after the shootings. Police said they seized two loaded weapons, illegal narcotics and evidence that aided the investigation during the raid, in which Yonkers detectives were joined by the Rockville Centre Police Department, the FBI and the Nassau County Police Department’s Bureau of Special Operations.

White shared an apartment with his brother, Carl Perryman, who was arrested in February and is being held without bail as he faces federal charges of attempted murder.

Even after the trial concluded, the motive for the shooting was not clear, prosecutors acknowledged.

According to prosecutors, White, dressed as a UPS deliveryman, was recorded on video surveillance entering the Yonkers Avenue building where Hackley lived with her husband and daughter. Parsley can be seen pacing in the lobby and hiding near the victims’ apartment before Hackley — and White — arrived.