Local man charged in Brooklyn murders

A Valley Stream man was arrested last Friday and charged with murder in the deaths of two men police said he shot outside a wake in East Flatbush on April 27, Newsday reported.

Pierre Celestine, 35, of Barry Drive South, was charged with two counts of murder and two counts of gun possession for the shooting that killed Sharieff Clayton, 40, of Baychester, in the Bronx, and Ronald Murphy, 44, of Cypress Hills, Brooklyn, and injured four others, including Murphy’s 38-year-old wife, according to the report.

The shooting happened outside Emmanuel Church of God in East Flatbush, where a wake was being held for Jose Luis Robles, 38, who the NYPD said died of natural causes and may have been affiliated with the Bloods street gang. Clayton had allegedly argued with another man at the wake about a “decades-old” crime, Newsday reported, and police said Clayton punched the man in the face.

The man left, then returned with two other men who fired gunshots from a car into the crowd.