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Son of MBTA Transit Police chief convicted of manslaughter
Brian Green was found guilty of killing his estranged wife’s boyfriend as the couple slept in an Everett apartment.
A Saugus man whose father is chief of the MBTA Transit Police was convicted of manslaughter Wednesday for killing his estranged wife’s boyfriend as the couple slept in an Everett apartment.
Brian Green, 38, was going through a divorce when he went to the Central Avenue apartment he and his wife once shared and shot Jarmahl Sutson shortly after 4:20 a.m. on July 19, 2022, prosecutors said.
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Jurors ultimately rejected the original murder charge and convicted Green of manslaughter, a lesser-included offense. He was also found guilty of solicitation to commit a crime and breaking and entering with intent to commit a felony, court records show.
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Manslaughter carries a sentence of up to 20 years in prison, though his attorney said Green’s sentencing has not yet been scheduled.
“The verdict, I think, speaks for itself,” Gordon W. Spencer said in a brief phone interview Thursday. He noted jurors declined to convict on first- or second-degree murder, instead finding that Green had acted in the “heat of passion.”
Prosecutors said Green, who worked as a commuter rail conductor at the time, had a history of physical violence toward his estranged wife and had “expressed suspicions over the weeks leading up to the murder that she had been dating Mr. Sutson,” per a statement of the case filed in court.
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Green further accused his estranged wife of “ghosting him” on the night before the murder, according to prosecutors.
While Green purportedly claimed he was at his father’s house and then at work at the time of the shooting, prosecutors said surveillance camera footage and cellphone records put him at the crime scene.
After shooting Sutson, Brian Green broke into a cousin’s home and asked him to dispose of a firearm and a bundle of clothing. The cousin complied “out of fear,” according to prosecutors, but Massachusetts State Police divers were able to recover the loaded firearm from a nearby lake and matched the gun to a shell casing found at the scene. A pair of gloves found in Green’s backpack also tested positive for gunshot residue.
Green’s father is MBTA Transit Police Chief Kenneth Green. Asked about Brian Green’s employment status, a Keolis spokesperson said Green was removed from service without pay upon his arrest, “pending an administrative hearing following the outcome of his criminal trial.”
“Keolis has begun that internal process now that the trial has concluded,” the spokesperson added.
In his 2022 obituary, Sutson’s family remembered him as a loyal friend, a “Nana’s boy,” and a loving father of four.
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“He had a big heart and would often help people in need, even giving them the shirt off his back,” his obituary states.
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