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Death by Russian roulette

Teen shoots beau with nearly full gun

By NANCY DILLON and GREG GITTRICH
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS


A pregnant teen fired a bullet into her 18-year-old boyfriend's head -
killing him during a bizarre game of Russian roulette played with a gun
nearly filled with slugs, authorities said yesterday.

In a chilling statement to cops, 19-year-old Nadera Goodson described
how she shot her boyfriend in the skull as they sat inside a bedroom of
a boarded-up apartment in Jamaica, Queens, about noon Saturday.

"He put the gun in my mouth and pulled the trigger and nothing
happened," Goodson told cops. "Then put it to his head, pulled the
trigger and nothing happened.

"Then he gave me the gun," she said, court records reveal. "I got
scared, pulled the trigger and shot him in the head."

Michael Henry, a troubled former choirboy, died inside the Foch Blvd.
apartment.

Based on the odds, he never had a chance.

Before the deadly game began, the seven-shot revolver was loaded with
not one but five bullets, a police source said.

After the first two pulls of the trigger each yielded only a click, the
third pull had to fire a live round.

As Henry bled to death, Goodson hollered out a second-floor window: "He
shot himself! Help me!" a neighbor said.

Goodson first told cops Henry had fallen on the bed and the .32-caliber
revolver went off, sources said.

She then said he shot himself during the game of Russian roulette, and
she finally gave cops written and videotaped statements detailing how
she pulled the trigger, the sources said.

But Goodson's attorney David Cohen, who said his client is two months
pregnant, maintained Henry shot himself. Cohen said Henry had played
Russian roulette "more than a couple" oftimes.

Henry, a high school dropout who turned his back on his staunchly
religious family when he was 16, had been living in the nearly vacant
home for about a month, authorities said.

In a strange arrangement, he was being paid to guard the house while it
was renovated, but his family and police knew few specifics of the deal.

Yesterday afternoon, his mother questioned whether her wayward son
really was a victim of Russian roulette.

Standing outside her well-kept bungalow in Laurelton, Beatrice Henry,
59, offered no kind words for Goodson.

"I had her banned from my house," Henry said. "She was manipulative and
controlling. But he could not see it."

Henry said she and her husband took Michael into their home as a foster
child in the late 1980s and adopted him in 1998.

Michael Henry was reared asa Pentecostal Christian but wearied of the
church as a teen.

In recent years, he was arrested for marijuana possession and robbing a
man at knifepoint, his mother said. "He was like a loose cannon," she said.

Henry, who bragged about being in a gang, had been dating Goodson for
about a year.

Goodson, who was charged with second-degree manslaughter and weapons
possession, faces up to 25 years in prison, ifconvicted. Her father is
dead, and authorities were trying totrack down her mother yesterday.

Henry's older brother Reginald was still wearing his church suit when he
paused to talk about the fatal shooting.

"I tried to steer him in the right way," he said. "He probably felt that
he had to prove himself - that he could make it on the streets."

*With Richard Weir and Derek Rose*



*Originally published on August 9, 2004*