Nicole duFresne
| Nicole duFresne | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
January 5, 1977 Minnesota, U.S. |
| Died | January 27, 2005 (aged 28) Lower East Side, Manhattan, New York City |
| Cause of death | Homicide |
| Occupation | Actress and playwright |
Nicole duFresne (January 5, 1977 – January 27, 2005) was an American playwright and actress. She was murdered on a sidewalk on Manhattan's Lower East Side when seven youths accosted and mugged a group consisting of duFresne, her fiancé Jeffrey Sparks, her close friend Mary Jane Gibson, and Gibson's boyfriend Scott Nath sometime after 3:00 a.m. on January 27, 2005.
A graduate of the Perpich Center for Arts Education and Emerson College in Boston, Massachusetts, duFresne wrote or collaborated on five plays, including the two-woman show Burning Cage. She and Gibson collaborated on both the writing as well as the performances. A show about two women in a Boston asylum who are targeted for clandestine brainwashing experiments with LSD and shock treatments, it was performed at the Seattle Fringe Festival in 2002.
Moving to Brooklyn in 2003, duFresne was a founding member of the Present Tense Theater Project and performed with LAByrinth Theater, Algonquin Productions and Woman Alone Theater Company.
In the early morning hours of January 27, 2005, duFresne, Sparks, Gibson and Nath were returning home from a night of celebratory drinking. DuFresne had just started a new interim job as a bartender at the Rockwood Music Hall. As duFresne's group was walking down bistro-lined Clinton St. on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, a group of five young men and two girls approached them, "spoiling for a fight and looking for victims." The group had already mugged a man for his leather jacket and menaced a girl at a subway station that same night. According to testimony by another member of the group, Rudy Fleming stated, "I'd like to bang on these people right here."
Fleming demanded money. Sparks pushed his way past, at which point Fleming swung with both hands, striking him across his left temple with a Taurus .357 magnum, which he had been holding pointed downward at the sidewalk. According to Sparks neither he nor anyone else in the group had realized that Fleming had a gun. Another robber, Servisio Simmons, reportedly said, "It doesn't have to be like this. My friend's buggin'. We just want the money."
Fleming took Gibson's purse and cell phone and gave them to the girls, Ashley Evans and Tatiana McDonald. duFresne turned to Sparks who was dazed and bleeding profusely from his left eye, asking if he was OK. He indicated that he was and said "Let's just go". Nath took Sparks by the arm and they ran away, north on Clinton toward Rivington. Gibson turned to follow.
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