[1][8] As Sylvester, the owner of the car, remained behind, the other three men walked about three miles north to the mostly white neighborhood[1][8] of Howard Beach to find a pay phone.
[10] After entering Howard Beach, the three men were accosted by a group of white residents, who yelled racial slurs and told them to leave the neighborhood.
[8] After a rest and a meal, the men left the pizzeria at 12:40 a.m. and were confronted by a larger group of white youths led by 17-year-old John Lester and 16-year-old Jason Ladone.
Ministers Floyd Flake and Herbert Daughtry and activist Sonny Carson urged boycotts of white-owned businesses and pizzerias.
[8] Two days after the event, on December 22, three local youths, Lester and Ladone, along with Scott Kern, 18; all students at John Adams High School,[12] were arrested and charged with second-degree murder.
[13] The Griffith family, as well as Cedric Sandiford, retained the services of Alton H. Maddox and C. Vernon Mason, two attorneys who would become involved in the Tawana Brawley hoax the following year.
Maddox raised the ire of the NYPD and Commissioner Benjamin Ward by accusing them of trying to cover up facts in the case and aid the defendants.
[14] After witnesses repeatedly refused to cooperate with Queens district attorney John J. Santucci, then-governor Mario Cuomo appointed Charles Hynes as special prosecutor to handle the Griffith case on January 13, 1987.
[citation needed] A little over a year after the death of Griffith, and after 12 days of jury deliberations, the three main defendants, Kern, Lester and Ladone, were convicted on December 21, 1987, of second-degree manslaughter and first-degree assault.
[10] Subsequent race-related crimes in New York city included the 1989 killing of black teenager Yusuf Hawkins in the Bensonhurst neighborhood of Brooklyn by a gang of white youths.
[20][21] The case was revisited once more by the media after the death of Michael Sandy, 29, who was beaten and hit by a motorist after being chased onto the Belt Parkway in Brooklyn, New York, in October 2006.