Faces Up To 25 Years In Prison
Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz announced this week that Laurence Gendreau has been convicted of attempted murder, assault, and other crimes for picking up a 6-year-old boy and slamming him into the pavement headfirst on October 10, 2019.
The random assault took place outside the Kew Gardens home of the boy’s grandparents, Rabbi and Mrs. Naftali Portnoy, while the boy, son of Mr. and Mrs. Yaakov Portnoy, awaited a pizza delivery beside his older brother at approximately 4:45 p.m. The Portnoys, co-founders of the Jewish Heritage Center of Queens and Long Island, have been area residents for over four decades. The attack was rare for the usually quiet neighborhood of Kew Gardens. Gendreau, who was walking by shirtless, suddenly charged at the child, yelling at him. He lifted the boy over his head and slammed him down onto the pavement. Just over an hour earlier, on Union Turnpike in Kew Gardens, Gendreau, who claims to be bipolar, stole an iPad from the hands of an 83-year-old woman.
As the child was motionless on the ground, Gendreau fled. The boy’s brother ran inside and alerted his family. Rabbi Portnoy chased after Gendreau and flagged down a police officer. Gendreau was stopped near Lefferts Boulevard and Metropolitan Avenue. Gendreau claimed at the time that he wanted to kill the child.
While scarred from the ordeal, the boy, now a resident of the Jewish Heritage Center’s East Meadow division, has recovered from the trauma that left him with two skull fractures, bleeding on the brain, and a collapsed lung.
Gendreau, 39, whose last known address was on 110th Street in Richmond Hill, was convicted by a jury on September 20, 2023, of attempted murder in the second degree, assault in the first degree, two counts of endangering the welfare of a child, grand larceny in the fourth degree, and criminal possession of stolen property in the fifth degree. Gendreau has a history of criminal mischief and larceny with three sealed arrests dating back to 2017, and a January 2019 incident at a Manhattan eatery, when he threw a chair that hit an elderly woman.
District Attorney Katz said, “This senseless and brutal attack left a young boy seriously injured and a community shocked. We all deserve to feel safe in our homes and while walking the streets of our neighborhoods. The criminal justice system worked, and we were able to take a dangerous man off the street.”
Assistant District Attorney Kanella Georgopoulos, of the District Attorney’s Office’s Career Criminal Major Crimes Bureau, is prosecuting the case under the supervision of Assistant District Attorneys Michael Whitney, Bureau Chief, and under the overall supervision of Executive Assistant District Attorney for Major Crimes Shawn Clark. Justice Ira Margulis set sentencing for October 12 when Gendreau faces up to 25 years in prison.
