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Mostly Cloudy Mother defends son accused of murder
Casey Fitzgerald awaits extradition from Virginia
“He’s not a cold-hearted killer, he’s not a monster as he’s been made out to be,” said Diane Merchant about her son, Casey Fitzgerald.
Fitzgerald, 20, was arrested in Virginia on April 16 and charged with the second-degree murder of Ernest Cummings on East Hudson Street nearly a month earlier, and Merchant said her son was defending himself against Cummings.
“My son is not a bad kid,” Merchant said. “My son was on the right track. He has a baby that is 3-months-old. He was doing good and trying to start a music career.”
According to police, Fitzgerald, who lived at 31 Hudson Street in Long Beach, shot and killed Ernest Cummings, 46, outside a home at 19 E. Hudson Street, at about 3:34 p.m. on March 22. Since the shooting, police have released no further information about the incident, and Fitzgerald remains in a Virginia prison waiting extradition to Nassau County.
But Merchant claims that for a couple of months before Cummings was killed, including on the day he was shot dead, he had antagonized her son and threatened him with his pit bulls. “Ernest was trying to kill my son,” Merchant said. “He was bullying my son with his dogs.”
Merchant said she witnessed Cummings walking with two pit pulls and approached her son, who keeps their two pit bulls in cages in their yard, while he was standing outside their house on the sidewalk.
“He was telling my son in my face how he was going to kill him,” Merchant said. “‘You ain’t going to live today, you’re going to die today ... I should let them go and chew your ass up’ -- that’s what was coming out of his mouth.”
Not looking for trouble, Merchant said, her son walked off and Cummings followed him with his dogs, screaming and yelling profanities. “I was asking him, ‘What is wrong with you,’ 'Why don’t you just go home,'” she said she told Cummings. “My son was trying to avoid him, that’s what hurts me so much.”
Marcus Tinker, a liaison to the Cummings’ family, declined to comment about Merchant’s claims. “I don’t know anything about that,” he told the Herald. Nassau County police, which took over the primary investigation from the Long Beach Police Department, said that they will have no further information on the case at least until Fitzgerald is extradited back to New York.
