Three men from New Jersey are set to go on trial for killing a bouncer during a botched 2020 heist of a Brooklyn underground gambling den.
The stickup at the “G Spot,” an illegal cards and dice club in Brownsville, turned into a bloodbath, with four people shot, including Rodney Maxwell, 58, a longtime Bellevue Hospital employee and father of three who was moonlighting there as a security guard.
Rodney Maxwell
Maxwell had survived a week-long bout with COVID in March 2020 — during the terrifying early days of the pandemic, when overwhelmed doctors were struggling to handle the deadly virus — only to die six months later from bullet wounds to the back and chest.
Brian Castro, Musah Coward and Charles Powell, all face federal murder and robbery charges, with jury selection in their case starting Monday in Brooklyn Federal Court.
Coward, an accused gun seller who police said had ties to Brownsville, picked the den as a target and drove Maxwell, Castro and a fourth man to the Hegeman Ave. gambling location on Oct. 7, 2020, according to prosecutors.
The fourth alleged robber’s name is redacted in court documents; one filing describes him as a cooperating witness for the government.
Maxwell was working security at the gambling den, which had a front room facing Hegeman, an inner room where cards, craps and dominoes were played, and a backyard patio.
As prosecutors tell it in their court filings, Coward parked a Honda Civic around the corner, and stayed in the car while the other men rounded the corner and walked inside, single-file.
They then stormed through the front and back rooms toward the patio — Powell in front, followed by Castro and unnamed accomplice.
But Maxwell, the bouncer that night, jumped into action, struggling with the unnamed robber in an attempt to disarm him, the feds allege.
Their fight spilled from the inner room to the front room, which was covered by a surveillance camera. Castro rushed in to help his partner in crime, shooting Maxwell in the back, according to the feds.
The shot didn’t take Maxwell out of the fight, though, and Powell started spraying bullets at people fleeing into the backyard, wounding three men, federal prosecutors allege.
Maxwell was still fighting the unnamed robber, so Powell ran into the front room shot him again in the chest, mortally wounding him, the feds allege.
More than a month later, Castro was smoking pot in a car with an acquaintance and told him about the robbery, which he called a “lick,” saying his crew got $20,000, and describing how he shot Maxwell before his gun jammed, according to court papers. It turned out the acquaintance was recording their chat, court filings reveal.
A Patterson, N.J., police detective working with a federal gang task force recognized Powell and Castro after seeing surveillance photos the following April, and that led to Powell’s arrest in October 2021 after he got into a car crash in Clifton, N.J.
Castro and Coward were named in an indictment and arrested in March 2023.
The trio’s defense attorneys have challenged that detective’s ID in a failed attempt to get cell phone evidence thrown out.
The defense lawyers have also questioned whether the killing was part of a robbery, and Powell’s attorney, Murray Singer, argued in a Dec. 29, 2024 letter that Castro’s recorded statements about the shooting were bluster meant to boost his “street cred.”
“Had the purpose of the plan — to commit a robbery — not been successful, and Castro, having been fought off by intended victims, gotten nothing but instead had killed someone, this could be viewed as humiliating,” Singer wrote. “It makes sense, then, that Castro would try to puff up the incident.”
The lawyers for all three suspects on Thursday declined to comment.