NEW JERSEY PAROLEE IS ARRESTED IN KILLINGS OF 3 ABOVE CARNEGIE DELI

New York police officials yesterday announced the arrest of a parolee in
the killing of three people above the Carnegie Deli, saying that the
parolee, a convicted felon, would not have been free to commit the crime
but for an oversight by New Jersey parole authorities.

The suspect, Andre S. Smith of Irvington, N.J., was charged as one of two
men who barged into an apartment above the landmark Manhattan deli and shot
five people, three fatally, during a robbery of a high- priced marijuana
dealer on May 10.

New York investigators said Mr. Smith, who has an extensive arrest record
and is on parole for a violent robbery in 1993, should have been jailed
three months ago when he was arrested in New Jersey on charges of
possessing 311 grams of marijuana near an Irvington public school. But they
said New Jersey parole officials never moved to revoke his parole.

"He should not have been out," Police Commissioner Bernard B. Kerik said.

New Jersey officials said they were investigating whether that case, which
is pending, provided sufficient grounds on which to begin a parole
revocation proceeding.

Investigators said that after hours of questioning that ended Monday night,
Mr. Smith confessed to taking part in the robbery and tying up the victims.
But he blamed his partner, who is still a fugitive, for the shootings.

He told detectives the violence began by mistake when a gun held by his
partner, whom he identified as Sean Salley, accidentally discharged,
striking the dealer, Jennifer Stahl, in the forehead as he confronted her
during the robbery. Then, investigators said, the gunmen decided they would
have to kill the four other people in the apartment to cover their tracks.

The police are continuing to search the metropolitan area for Mr. Salley
and have sent detectives to Louisiana and Georgia, where he has friends and
relatives.

Investigators said Mr. Smith and Mr. Salley fatally shot Ms. Stahl, a
39-year-old former actress, and two of her friends when they went to her
sixth-floor apartment above the deli to steal the proceeds from Ms. Stahl's
business as a dealer of high-grade marijuana. Two other friends of Ms.
Stahl's, who survived being shot, have been helping detectives piece
together the crime.

Mr. Smith, 31, whose arrest was first reported by The New York Post
yesterday, was charged with three counts of murder. Officials said he
surrendered to the police on Sunday after hearing that detectives had been
to his home in Irvington.

For hours, investigators said, Mr. Smith denied any knowledge of the crime.
But he finally admitted a role, officials said, when he was told that one
of his fingerprints had been lifted from duct tape used to tie up the
victims and that detectives were preparing to place him in a lineup.

In his statement, Mr. Smith told detectives that Mr. Salley, whom he knew
through one of Mr. Salley's cousins, had asked him several weeks ago
whether he would be interested in robbing a woman who had a marijuana
business in New York. Mr. Smith said that he at first declined but then
changed his mind several days later and told Mr. Salley that he was
interested, investigators said.

Yesterday morning, after finishing his statement to detectives, Mr. Smith
was picked out of a lineup by a survivor, Anthony Veader, a hairstylist who
had been at the apartment to work on Ms. Stahl's hair, officials said. A
second survivor also viewed Mr. Smith in a lineup but could not make a
positive identification, officials said.

Mr. Veader told the police that he saw Mr. Smith holding the gun as the two
men entered the apartment, investigators said. But Mr. Smith told
detectives that he put the weapon down when he began to tie people up and
that Mr. Salley had picked it up and fired all the shots, beginning with
Ms. Stahl.

While the two men fled with $1,000 and 12 quarter-ounce bags of marijuana,
the police said there had been more in the apartment: an additional six
pounds of marijuana and $1,800 in cash.

Mr. Smith told investigators that they drove his 1991 Ford Escort back to
New Jersey where he and Mr. Salley split up the robbery proceeds.

Investigators said an acquaintance of Mr. Smith's had identified him from a
videotape from a surveillance camera in the hallway of the Seventh Avenue
building that houses the Carnegie Deli.

Police officials said Mr. Smith had an extensive criminal record that
included nine arrests on charges ranging from weapons possession to drug
offenses. At the time of the killings, he was on parole in New York for a
1993 gunpoint robbery of a man in Washington Heights, for which he spent a
little more than two years in prison.

He was arrested near an Irvington school in February on charges of
marijuana possession, criminal trespass and obstruction. Chris Carden, a
spokesman for the New Jersey Department of Corrections, said officials were
still looking into the circumstances of that case, which is pending in
Essex County.

Gov. George E. Pataki said the case showed the wisdom of New York in
eliminating parole for all violent felons. "We had revolving-door justice
for too long in this state," he said.