RELIEVED: Afrika Owes (right) leaves court with lawyer Elsie Chandler yesterday after the co-ed’s gun conviction was erased. (Steven Hirsch)
RELIEVED: Afrika Owes (right) leaves court with lawyer Elsie Chandler yesterday after the co-ed’s gun conviction was erased. (
)
She’d gone from prep-schooler to gun felon — but now her slate’s been wiped clean.
Former “Preppy Gun Moll” Afrika Owes, 19, cried tears of happiness in a Manhattan courtroom yesterday when her conviction as a young gangster and gun runner was vacated in an agreement between a judge and prosecutors.
“Actions speak louder than words,” the young scholar said outside court, smiling. “I don’t want to water it down.”
Owes’ saga generated headlines in 2011, when prosecutors announced they’d caught the then-16-year-old on a taped phone call agreeing to transport three guns for her drug-kingpin boyfriend, who headed Harlem’s dreaded 137th Street gang.
The brainy Owes was a scholarship student at the exclusive Deerfield Academy in western Massachusetts.
The headlines became bigger after Owes’ $25,000 cash bail was posted by the influential Abyssinian Baptist Church — the very church that had been begging Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance Jr., to do something about her gang.
Yesterday, Owes, who now attends Hobart and William Smith Colleges in upstate Geneva, was Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Edward McLaughlin noted that Owes has served six months in jail, has abided by all the requirements of the court by earning her high-school diploma at lower Manhattan’s Millennium School, and has completed a year on scholarship at has finished her first semester as a scholarship student at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in upstate Geneva.He then sentenced her in accordance with the state youthful-offender program, under which her record will be sealed. She’ll remain under the judge’s supervision for the next year, during which time she must stay out of trouble or risk a prison sentence of to 1 1/3 to four years in prison.
Owes’ life had been spinning out of control before her arrest, but she has now turned herself around, said Assistant District Attorney Christopher Ryan.
“This is what the New York Legislature had in mind when it provided for youthful offender adjudication,” Owes’ lawyer, Elsie Chandler, said after the sentencing.Chandler credited the KIPP Public School network, the Abyssinian Baptist Church and the lawyers of the Neighborhood Defender Service of Harlem, where she works, for their hard work and unwavering belief that Owes would succeed.
Abyssinian deacon Bobby Anderson said, after congratulating Owes “I’ve known her since she was 4. You have to look at the individual, not just what they are charged with.” he said.
“She’s a good person, and we knew her. That’s why we did it,” Anderson said of the church posting Owes’ bail. “She didn’t have to prove me right. I knew her.”