On Monday, Jan. 17—Martin Luther King Jr. Day—34-year-old Orenzso Bovell was murdered in his car by an unknown assailant.
The young Brooklynite died in his sister’s arms after he was shot on the corner of Quincy Street and Patchen Avenue in Bedford-Stuyvesant, his mother, Lorna Wright-Bovell, told The Daily Beast.
While detectives at the local 81st NYPD precinct have not yet identified a suspect in the case, Wright-Bovell received rather different, jolting news on Wednesday: that the investigators on the case are currently being overseen by the police chief who killed her eldest son in 2008.
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Nearly 14 years before Orenzso’s death, Ortanzso Bovell, a 25-year-old Black man, was shot and killed by then-Lieutenant John Chell of the NYPD.
Now-Deputy Chief Chell was never criminally charged for the killing—which he maintained was an accident—and has continued his ascent in the New York City Police Department. That has led him all the way to a perch as commanding officer for Brooklyn North detectives, essentially the indirect boss of the investigators on Orenzso’s case.
Only two weeks before Orenzso’s murder, Chell appeared besides NYC Mayor Eric Adams as part of the administration’s first big show of a nascent war against gun violence, specifically to announce a 17-person gang takedown in Brooklyn.
But ever since her elder son’s death in 2008, Wright-Bovell and others have questioned Chell’s continued rise. Most notably, in 2017, Wright-Bovell won $1.5 million from the city in a high-profile civil trial where a jury found Chell intentionally shot the gun that killed Ortanzso.
Civil trials have a lower standard of proof than criminal proceedings, where lawyers must convince a jury of a party’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
Last year, Wright-Bovell again spoke out, questioning Chell’s latest promotion in the wake of the George Floyd protests and a larger nationwide reckoning over police violence. Her story illustrates the complex issues that arise when politicians promise to reduce gun violence using the same cops whose conduct has deeply damaged trust between the public and the police.
“I don’t know if Chell could be holding a grudge for 14 years,” a grieving Wright-Bovell told The Daily Beast. “It’s 2008, he killed my son. The articles are all over that he was found [liable] of killing my son and that’s all I wanted. But 14 years after, here I am again with Chell in my life.”
When asked about the ethics of Chell’s involvement in the ongoing Bovell murder case, an NYPD spokesperson told The Daily Beast that he was not the “immediate supervisor or investigator.”
“Investigators continue to actively investigate this case and remain in contact with family members regarding updates,” added the spokesperson.
Attempts to reach Deputy Chief Chell directly for comment for this story were unsuccessful, and a request for comment to the president of the Captain’s Endowment Association—Chell’s union—went unanswered.
According to the NYPD website, “detective borough chiefs oversee investigations conducted by the precinct detective squads.”
<p><strong><em>Know something we should about cops or injustice in general? Reach out to Eileen Grench at Eileen.Grench@TheDailyBeast.com or securely at eileen.grench@protonmail.com</strong></em></p>
Even just the appearance of a conflict of interest should concern police enough to move the case under a different command structure, argued Alex Vitale, a policing expert and author at Brooklyn College.
“That should matter to them. They claim it matters to them,” Vitale told The Daily Beast. “But I think their culture of… defensiveness and, ‘We didn’t do anything wrong,’ is trumping that.”
For her part, a grieving Wright-Bovell told The Daily Beast that with Chell, “God is the final judge” over the killing of her eldest. But upon hearing he was tied, even indirectly, to the probe of her youngest son’s murder, she didn’t “know what to think.”
When Chell shot and killed Ortanzso Bovell in 2008, he was a lieutenant and head of the Brooklyn North Larceny Squad.
According to his own accounts to investigators, Chell and his colleagues had attempted to arrest the elder Bovell in a car cops alleged he had stolen that August evening. Chell told both NYPD investigators and the civil trial jury that he had accidentally pulled the trigger of his gun “in the process of falling to the ground” as he stumbled after being pushed by the car.
The New York City Police Department and Brooklyn District Attorney’s office effectively backed up his claim when they quickly closed the case and never charged Chell with a crime.
But an admission during his deposition showed Chell had not yet been interviewed by internal investigators, weeks after the cases had been closed. (The NYPD has suggested this is routine.)
These, and other documents, came to light nine years later, when Wright-Bovell would sue Chell for her “love child” son’s death, and win.
During a five-week trial, witnesses and testimony from the medical examiner convinced the jury that the preponderance of evidence showed Chell did not shoot his gun by accident.
“I believe in the truth,” retired NYPD sex-crimes detective John Baeza, one of the expert witnesses who reconstructed the shooting for the civil trial, told The Daily Beast. The ex-cop still often thinks about his findings, shaken by what he believes is a lack of accountability for Chell.
“What you have is you have somebody who’s a [killer], who has rose [sic] in the ranks of the New York City Police Department to where he’s a Chief, he’s two steps away from being a three-star Chief and possibly chief of detectives,” said Baeza. Chell was never charged with a crime.
“And it just has stuck with me for years because of this.”
Wright-Bovell was awarded $2.5 million for Ortanzso’s death in Brooklyn civil court, where the jury determined that Chell had “intentionally discharged” his weapon. Wright-Bovell eventually accepted $1.5 million in a settlement to avoid an appeal.
In a 2021 statement to THE CITY regarding Chell’s past, Chris Monahan, his union’s president, said the NYPD has a “very thorough investigation in every police-related shooting,” and that successful executives like Chell in the NYPD move up the ladder quickly.
“And, you know, unfortunately, in this type of work, things sometimes happen,” he said at the time.
As for Wright-Bovell, she maintains her son was proven to be “wrongfully killed” and wants to stand up for him—a trait she said they had in common.
“I’m sorry, but that Ortanzso, Ortanzso’s like his mom. Ortanzso stands up,” said Wright-Bovell about her eldest son, whom the family called Marlon.
She also detailed posoitive interactions with police, including the detectives investigating Orenzso’s murder—and even referred to positive experiences Orenzso had himself.
“I don’t like to judge and I don’t like to assume, because I don’t like anybody to judge me,” she said of the work the detectives had done.
Once, she claimed, Orenzso’s name was recognized by local officers when he was pulled over in the time after his older brother’s death.
“He says, ‘Mom, these officer[s] acting strange,’” she told The Daily Beast, recalling his account. “‘Look!’” Orenzso had said the officers exclaimed, “‘This guy’s name is Orenzso Bovell!’”
“You know, that’s the precinct that Chell used to be at Utica Avenue,” said Wright-Bovell. “Where he was the captain. And so they took him... and asked him, ‘What’s his name?’ He says, ‘Orenzso Bovell.’ So they thought it [was] Ortanzso,” said Wright-Bovell.
“The name stands out. And he said he treated them—they treated him very well.”
Wright-Bovell remembered Orenzso, her youngest son who was killed early this year, as soft and loving.
“Loving, crying for everything,” she said. “Big, grown man that if I say, ‘Oh, you can’t do that to your girlfriend,’ [he’d reply], ‘Oh, Mom. Sorry,’ you know?” she recalled, changing her voice to sound like his forlorn tone.
But following his murder, Wright-Bovell said she has struggled with a lack of news on Orenzso’s assailant.
“Now that my son is dead and I realize that [Chell’s] in charge, it makes you say, ‘Huh, I wonder if!’”
Two weeks before the youngest Bovell’s death, Deputy Chief Chell stepped back into the spotlight as he stood shoulder to shoulder with Mayor Adams and other prominent NYPD figures. The Brooklyn District Attorney took questions from the press about Adams’ first major gang takedown.
Since the 2008 shooting, Chell had continued to check off many of the boxes a cop must in order to rise within the department. He had commanded the 79th and 75th precincts—the latter the largest precinct and a prestigious posting in an area that struggles with gun violence—and headed up investigations within the southern section of Brooklyn.
His most recent promotion to commanding officer of detectives in Borough Brooklyn North concerned community members and various local politicians, but it didn’t stop his rise.
Police work like Chell’s on murders, narcotics, and gangs are the center of Mayor Adams’ war on gun violence, and Brooklyn North is a key battleground. Multiple precincts within Brooklyn North were the targets of the mayor’s new anti-crime teams.
This year, Chell also directed the high-profile investigation into the death of Michael K. Williams, who died of a drug overdose in his Williamsburg apartment.
“Treat this case as if Michael K. Williams was hit by a bullet,” Chell recalled telling detectives from the 90th precinct, in an interview at the time with The Daily Beast. “Make believe he got shot.”
But as Mayor Adams has condemned gun violence, he has also condemned police violence—and promised to walk a fine line between supporting the police and stopping misconduct. He has often cited his history of fighting against racially-biased policing during his career as an officer himself.
When The Daily Beast asked the mayor’s office about whether Adams felt Chell’s placement and status in proximity to the investigation of Bovell’s death was proper, the mayor’s team was tight-lipped.
“The mayor does not get involved in the NYPD’s promotions,” said spokesman Fabien Levy.
The Bovells’ mother said she was still in shock after her youngest’s death and did not want to assume anything about the police work in her case. She said she has even insisted to neighbors who came to her with their theories to “let the police do their job.”
She is comforted, she added, by the two grandsons that Orenzso has left behind; Wright-Bovell is the matriarch of 18 grand and great grandchildren.
But she also questioned whether her eldest son’s killer should be allowed to investigate—or oversee the investigation of—any murders at all.
“I work with autistic children. If I ever had an [child welfare] case, or was arrested or had a felony, if my background wasn’t clean, I would not be able to get the job, you know,” she told The Daily Beast. “And this job that he has is a big-time job! So somebody needs to look at him. We have a change of management that may look in and see.”
