Totesau Faces Up to 25 Years in Prison for South Floral Park Attack; Co-Defendant Awaiting Trial
Nassau County District Attorney Kathleen Rice announced that a jury has convicted a Far Rockaway man of burglary, robbery, and other felonies for his role in the armed home invasion of a South Floral Park home that left a couple and their three young children tied up with duct tape.
It took a jury less than an hour to convict Troy Totesau, 38, of Far Rockaway, of two counts of Robbery in the First Degree, two counts of Burglary in the First Degree, Robbery in the Second Degree, five counts of Unlawful Imprisonment in the Second Degree and four counts of Attempted Assault in the Second Degree. Totesau faces up to 25 years in prison at his Jan. 20 sentencing.
Rice said that at approximately noon on Aug.13, 2009, a woman rang the doorbell of a Roquette Avenue home in South Floral Park, telling the 12-year-old boy who answered the door that she was with the government and needed to speak to the child’s mother for a survey. After the mother came to the front door and briefly spoke with the woman, Totesau pushed his way into the home, armed with a handgun and struck the mother in the shoulder, knocking her down.
A second man, Dexter Lucas, 39, of Flushing, then entered the home and ran upstairs to a bedroom where the husband was sleeping. Lucas bound the husband’s hands, put duct tape over his mouth and demanded money.
Downstairs, Totesau and the female accomplice gathered the mother, the 12-year-old son, as well as the family’s 8-year-old daughter and 3-year-old son.
Lucas had previously installed sheetrock at the home and knew that the homeowner drove a cab at night, slept during the day, and kept large amounts of cash in the house. When the homeowner at first refused to tell Lucas where he kept his money, Totesau and the female accomplice brought the man’s wife and three children upstairs and lined them up against the wall to watch as Lucas continued to strike the man. The man eventually told the defendants that his money was in a nearby briefcase.
After taking the briefcase, which contained about $70,000, jewelry, credit cards, and assorted documents, the mother and three children were all tied up with duct tape, including the 3-year-old.
Totesau was arrested later that day at approximately 5:30 p.m. on Pennsylvania Avenue in Brooklyn when NYPD officers pulled him over for driving while talking on his cell phone, and arresting him for driving with a suspended license. Inside Totesau’s vehicle, which the victim’s wife and oldest son were able to describe as a maroon Kia, officers found more than $7,000 in cash, and the victim’s driver’s license and credit cards.
NYPD officers tracked down the victim through the stolen driver’s license, and then coordinated with Nassau County detectives to keep Totesau at the Brooklyn precinct. Officers there told Totesau he should call someone to pick up his vehicle. Totesau called Lucas, and both were held until Nassau police arrived to arrest them.
Lucas is awaiting trial on two counts of Robbery in the First Degree, two counts of Burglary in the First Degree, Robbery in the Second Degree, five counts of Unlawful Imprisonment in the Second Degree and four counts of Attempted Assault in the Second Degree. He faces up to 25 years in prison if convicted.
The female accomplice was never apprehended and the remainder of the proceeds have yet to be recovered. The investigation is ongoing.
“Thanks to excellent work by both the Nassau County Police Department and the NYPD, this defendant could not run from the violence he had committed,” Rice said. “To force young children to watch their father being beaten is beyond comprehension. Thanks to this jury’s verdict, however, this defendant will now face years locked in a prison cell.”
Assistant District Attorney Melissa Lewis of the Major Offense Bureau is prosecuting the case for the District Attorney’s Office. Totesau is represented by Dennis Lemke, Esq.
The charges against Lucas are merely accusations and the defendant is presumed innocent until and unless proven guilty.
