On the morning of February 8, 2003, John Freddy, forty-three, a Guyanese immigrant of Indian descent, was shot from behind as he drank coffee in his Central Mini-Market on Liberty Avenue in Ozone Park, Queens. Over the next six weeks Larme Price shot four more shopkeepers in Brooklyn. Sukhjit Khajala, fifty, known as Sammy, whose first name is also written Sujit, was killed in his mini-market in Mill Basin; Albert Kotlyar, thirty-two, an immigrant from Ukraine, in a laundromat in Bedford-Stuyvesant; and Mohammed Abdo Nasser Ali, fifty-four, from Yemen, in a bodega in Crown Heights on March 20. Ali's cousin, Yakoob Aldailam, who was behind the counter, was shot several times and survived.
He told investigators robbery was never the point, and that he was avenging the attacks of September 11, 2001. He described a paranoid hatred of Arabs. The New York press called him the Sept. 11 Killer after the reason he gave.
The reason did not match the men. All five were immigrants, of several different nationalities, and only one of the four who died was Middle Eastern.
His mental health was raised throughout. Born in Brooklyn on June 27, 1972, he was described by his mother as a mentally disturbed drug addict who had twice tried to admit himself to psychiatric facilities and been turned away. Hospital records show he was treated for mental health problems in October 2001, and again on March 9, 2003, the day before he shot Albert Kotlyar. He had eight arrests going back to 1989 for robbery, assault and weapons possession.
Police matched a pistol recovered from the home of Price's girlfriend to the shooting at the Crown Heights bodega, and recovered a baseball cap, a hooded sweatshirt and a jacket they believed he had worn. On April 11, 2003, a grand jury indicted him on first-degree murder charges that specified the crimes as a serial killing, which made him eligible for death.
He walked into a police station on March 28, 2003 offering to name the man responsible, a man he called Dog, having already been filmed at one of the scenes, and confessed the next day. He was charged with four counts of murder and two of attempted murder. In November, facing a possible death sentence, he pleaded guilty under an agreement that spared his life, and in February 2004 was sentenced to life without parole, a term also reported as one hundred fifty years without parole. He was reported held at Green Haven Correctional Facility in Stormville, New York; no release or death has been reported.