Where is Keith Mondello now? Details about Yusuf Hawkins: Storm Over Brooklyn subject explored

Keith Mondello is one of the instigators in the group that was responsible for the death of Yusuf Hawkins, an African-American teen, in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, in 1989. Yusuf Hawkins' death was one of the events that gave rise to serious discontent among the African-American community and led to several protest marches between 1989 and 1991.

Yusuf Hawkins: Storm Over Brooklyn is a crime documentary that narrates the events leading to Hawkins' death and the people involved. It was directed by Muta'Ali Muhammad and released by HBO on August 12, 2020, following the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement in May 2020.

Keith Mondello was thought to have been the primary organizer of the group that eventually led to Hawkins' death. The official description of the documentary on HBO reads:

This film revisits the tragic 1989 death of an African American teen at the hands of an Italian mob in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn.

Although Keith Mondello was not charged with murder, he was imprisoned on several other charges. He was released in 1998 and was last known to be living in Staten Island, New York, with his family.

Follow along with the article to know more details.

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Who is Keith Mondello and what did he do?

A courtroom sketch of Yusuf Hawkins' 1989 trial in the Supreme Court (image via Library of Congress)

Keith Mondello was a 19-year-old youngster living in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, in 1989, an area primarily dominated by Italian-Americans at the time. According to the documentary, Mondello had issues with one-time girlfriend Gina Feliciano, who had invited several African-American and Hispanic friends to her birthday party in August 1989.

This infuriated Mondello, causing him to organize a mob of youngsters, aged between 10 and 30, to lie in wait for Feliciano's friends, armed with weapons, including baseball bats. Sadly, though, they ended up attacking 16-year-old Hawkins and his friends, who were also African-American.

Hawkins and his friends, who originally hailed from East New York, had been in the neighborhood for completely unrelated reasons to look at a used Pontiac. Altercations between an unsuspecting Hawkins and his friends and the young Italian-American mob ultimately resulted in Hawkins being shot in the chest.

Joseph Fama, 19, was identified as Hawkins' shooter and sentenced to 32 and one-third years to life in prison on account of second-degree murder. Keith Mondello, however, was called the group's "instigator and organizer" by then Assistant DA Paul Burns, according to Daily News.

Mondello was also charged with murder and manslaughter, but he was acquitted of these charges in May 1990. He was nonetheless found guilty on 12 other charges, including rioting, menacing, racial discrimination, unlawful imprisonment, and criminal possession of a weapon.

Then Justice Thaddeus Owens awarded him the harshest sentence possible for a teen at the time - five and one-third to sixteen years, with no chance of parole before the minimum sentence was served. Owens justified his ruling at the time, saying that there would not have been any deaths if not for Mondello.

Mondello received his sentence on June 11, 1990, and served his time in the Attica Correctional Facility in New York. He was released after eight years on June 2, 1998.

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Where is Keith Mondello now?

Since his release from prison, Mondello has expressed deep regret for his role in Hawkins' murder. He met Moses Stewart, Hawkins' father, privately to express his guilt and personally apologize in a meeting organized by NY1 News.

As of 2014, Keith Mondello alleged that he had completely turned his life around. He obtained a four-year sociology degree from St. Francis College in Brooklyn Heights and has a job with the city. In his last interview with The Daily News in 2014, Mondello was married with a daughter, and living in Staten Island, New York.

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Watch the whole story on Yusuf Hawkins: Storm Over Brooklyn, streaming on HBO.