Convicted NYC hit man claims innocence as judge sentences him to life

A defiant drug trafficker turned hit man insisted he was innocent Monday as a Brooklyn judge sentenced him to life in prison for the 2019 contract killing of a real estate developer.
Antony Abreu, 36, faced a mandatory life sentence after a jury found him guilty in April of murder-for-hire charges in the 2019 shooting of Xin “Chris” Gu, outside a Queens karaoke bar.
“I’m innocent. I didn’t kill anyone,” Abreu told Judge Carol Bagley Amon Monday. “Yes, I did sell marijuana, but selling marijuana doesn’t make me a killer, doesn’t make me a ruthless person.”
Abreu insisted he’d never seen Gu’s face before the trial and added, “I was never there, never killed that man, never killed anybody. I am an innocent man being sentenced to life today.”
Gu’s death was ordered by his former boss and mentor, Manhattan developer Qing Ming “Allen” Yu, who wanted revenge after his former protegee started his own business and poached several clients on his way out.
Yu tasked his nephew to assemble a kill team, and Abreu was recruited by accomplice Zhe Zhang to pull the trigger. Yu and Zhang were found guilty in a separate trial in October.
About 2:35 a.m. on Feb. 12, 2019, Abreu executed Gu as he waited for an Uber at the Grand Slam KTV karaoke bar in Flushing. A jury found Abreu’s payment for the hit was a high-priced Richard Mille wristwatch worth more than $100,000, prosecutors said.
“Mr. Abreu stalked and murdered a young, innocent man, killed him by shooting him point-blank in the back of the head,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Devon Lash said Monday.
Abreu is already serving a 24-year prison sentence for a federal cocaine distribution conviction in Mississippi.
Amon rejected a motion by Abreu’s lawyer, Susan Kellman, to have the verdict overturned, and blasted Abreu’s “reprehensible” testimony in his own defense at trial. “He chose to take the stand, in this court’s view, to blatantly lie about his involvement.”
Kellman argued that “no reasonable juror could conclude that the fact that Zhang gave Mr. Abreu a watch during the year after the murder demonstrates the watch was payment for the murder.”
At Monday’s hearing, Kellman said, “I think I’ll save my remarks for the court of appeals.”