Steven Julien’s family will never get over his senseless killing at a Queens drag race in 1998, and his half-brother still agonizes over whether decisions he made that night led to his sibling’s death.
So the pain was still raw when Julien’s kin got hit with another gut punch 26 years later — his killer, who was released from prison in 2019, was recently accused of taking another life.
“I didn’t even know he was out,” Julien’s sister, Allison Pulizzi, told the Daily News. “He shouldn’t have been let out in the first place … It’s heartbreaking. It tears you apart all over again. You have to grieve for somebody else’s family, but I’m still grieving for my brother, for my own family.”
Julien was 22 years old and hanging out with a group of friends and relatives in Queens the night of Oct. 11, 1998, when Jose Feliciano, then 24, shot him on Francis Lewis Blvd. after a confrontation over a rude comment to a woman in the group escalated to gunplay.
Feliciano was ultimately sentenced to 24 years after a trial, an overturned verdict and a plea deal.
On Feb. 10, Feliciano killed again, police said, stabbing Brooklyn bar bouncer Laurence Hopkins as Hopkins tried to break up a fight.
Ken Brown, 59, Julien’s older half-brother, was struck by the similarities in both dearths — both his slain loved one and Hopkins were peacemakers trying to defuse a violent situation.
“All I see is two peaceful guys. I don’t know Hopkins, but it sounds similar in the sense that [there were] two big guys, peaceful,” Brown said. “[Feliciano] goes towards people who won’t fight back, it seems. He kills innocent people, like gentle giants.”
On the night Julien was killed, Brown was hanging out with him and his girlfriend, along with another couple, Coron Graham and his date, joining a crowd of more than 100 people outside a Bayside diner on Francis Lewis Blvd. waiting for a drag race to begin.
That’s when a stranger in the crowd made a comment about Graham’s girlfriend that Brown overheard: “Goddamn, look at this b—h.”
Brown thought it was meant as an edgy compliment, not an insult, so he told Graham’s girlfriend what the man said.
“She took it the wrong way and she told [Graham],” Brown said. “That’s what started everything.”
Graham lost his cool, grabbed a baseball bat from his car and confronted Feliciano. Julien, hoping to calm his buddy down, took the bat away.
“My brother’s trying to tell [Graham] to calm himself and I’m trying to tell my brother, ‘let’s just go. Leave him alone,’” Brown said.
As tensions escalated, Feliciano pulled a gun and opened fire, hitting Julien twice.
“To this moment … I beat myself up because if I never told [Graham’s girlfriend] that, I think [Julien] would have been here with us today.” Brown told the Daily News. “To this day, I’m talking to you about it and I’m feeling it in my chest right now.”
Victim Laurence Hopkins. (Obtained by Daily News)
Feliciano fled the scene and was arrested after a high-speed chase by cops. A jury found him guilty of murder in 2000 and he was sentenced to 37½ years behind bars, but that conviction got tossed on appeal because of a mistake made during jury selection.
In 2005, he took a deal to avoid another trial — 24 years in exchange for a guilty plea to manslaughter.
The plea “was a real blow to our family,” Pulizzi, Julien’s sister, said. “We really were fighting to keep him in and make sure he served, that he didn’t get out.
“He was someone who was dangerous,” she added.
Feliciano went free in September 2019, and early this year became embroiled in another deadly confrontation — once again taking the life of a man trying to keep the peace, prosecutors allege.
Hopkins, 61, a bouncer at Garden Bar & Grill in East Williamsburg, was trying to break up a fight when Feliciano pulled a knife and stabbed him in the neck, armpit and chest, cops said.
He went on the run, and was caught in Colorado in September. Feliciano was indicted on murder and other charges Oct. 16 and remains held without bail. His lawyer declined comment Sunday.
“If they get him now this time and he is convicted, he needs to stay in jail. That is where he needs to remain. He is not someone who can be rehabilitated,” Pulizzi said.
Julien was working for the Long Island Railroad and hoping to pop the question to his girlfriend. He was a new dad to a young son, and he relished the thought of raising his child, Pulizzi said.
“We used to go fishing a lot. We went out to Montauk, went to shark tournaments. We did crabbing. Nice things,” she said. “When he had a son, he was very excited. He was a very good father.”
She said Julien’s death destroyed the family. “Everyone’s life got cut short when he got killed.”