ACTRESS KILLER CONVICTED

"It took a Manhattan jury only six hours - alone in a deliberation room with the most persuasive physical evidence in the chilling case - to bring justice to tragic Nicole duFresne by finding her killer guilty of intentional murder.

As spirited as she was picturesque, duFresne, 28, was gunned down after angrily challenging teen thug Rudy Fleming as he leveled the revolver at her heart on a Lower East Side street two winters ago.

"You got what you wanted," she shouted after Fleming mugged duFresne and her friends, according to witnesses and prosecutors.

Furious at seeing her friends endangered and her fiancé brutally pistol-whipped, she added what would be her final words, "What are you going to do now, shoot us?"

Fleming, 21, lived in a housing project near where the killing took place on Clinton and Rivington streets. He had argued through defense lawyer Anthony Ricco that the shooting was accidental, and that his gun went off during a shoving match between mugger and victim.

But Fleming's gun could fire only if at least five pounds of pressure was applied to the trigger, prosecutor Robert Hettleman told jurors.

"There are some in the media who criticized her actions that night," duFresne's parents and brother Zach said yesterday in a joint statement written before the verdict.

"In defense of her wounded and bleeding fiancé and friends, Nicole chose to step forward, asking for their release from further harm. She confronted the man with the gun, pleading for the confrontation to end. The response to her request was a bullet to her heart.

"If a man had acted in the same manner, he may have been proclaimed a hero," the statement continued. "Nicole died that night defending those she loved. She is our hero."

Well, that bit of lunacy needs no response, and the murderer himself deserved the guilty verdict, but why his defense attorney didn't quash the whole "5 lbs. of pressure means intentional" nonsense by NOT asking why the NYPD needs DOUBLE that to feel safe with THEIR weapons, is beyond me. The infamous NY Trigger came about after one accidental (read negilgent) discharge after another led the cops to believe that a 5 lb trigger was a deadly mistake waiting to happen. Do as we say, not as we do, is commonplace when discussing law enforcement and any halfwit lawyer should have been able to put enough doubt in the jury's mind.