Free Republic

One of the jurors who helped convict Chanel Lewis of murder for slaying Queens jogger Karina Vetrano said Monday night that he wasn’t sure the man was guilty and felt pressured to convict him. “He seems like such a good kid. Did he really do this?” the juror, a white male in his 30s, said outside court Monday night about Lewis. “I kept thinking ‘How tall is Karina? How tall is Chanel?’ She looked pretty buff me to.”

A jury in the retrial of the man accused of killing Queens jogger Karina Vetrano found him guilty of murdering the 30-year-old woman and dumping her body in weeds near her home. Chanel Lewis, 22, was found guilty on all four counts brought against him. The jury deliberated for just a few hours before returning the guilty verdict. Earlier in the day, they heard closing arguments as Vetrano’s parents wept and prayed in the courtroom, hoping Lewis would be found guilty of the slaying after his first trial ended in a mistrial in November.

The confessed killer of Queens jogger Karina Vetrano told detectives he hated the victim’s predominantly white neighborhood of Howard Beach, leading cops to believe race played a role in the murder, sources told The Post. “I don’t like those people over there,” said Chanel Lewis, 20, who is black and split time between homes in the largely impoverished neighborhoods of East New York and Brownsville, according to sources. Lewis made the statement to a black detective when asked why he killed Vetrano, who was found strangled in Spring Creek Park. His comment caused cops to believe race was a factor...

Cops caught a suspect Saturday in the murder of Karina ­Vetrano, the beautiful jogger whose brutal strangulation last summer — in the high weeds of Spring Creek Park in Queens — had transfixed the city. Officials did not immediately release the name of the suspect, but sources told The Post he is in his 20s and lives in a housing project in East New York, Brooklyn, a neighborhood just west of her home in Howard Beach. The suspect had been on police radar for a while, sources told The Post.