POKER SLAY BUST

NYC -- NEW MAN CHARGED

After being forced to free their first suspect in last month's fatal Flatiron District poker game shooting, cops have arrested another man in the killing.

Cops busted Steven Perez, 21, of Tampa, Fla., last Saturday, and he is being held without bail, police sources said.

It is not clear if he is the triggerman who gunned down 55-year-old gambler Frank DeSena with a shotgun blast to the chest during the Nov. 2 holdup of a posh underground poker game near Fifth Avenue and 28th Street.

Sources said Perez was caught on video surveillance cameras participating in the fatal heist. He was arrested in New York on Saturday and is being held in the Manhattan Detention Center. He's scheduled to appear at a hearing today.

Perez, who is charged with second-degree murder and first-degree robbery, is one of three suspects. According to the criminal complaint, Perez admitted to participating in the crime.

Perez's arrest came almost three weeks after a judge ordered William Delvalle, 35, freed. Delvalle was arrested on Nov. 9 for allegedly participating in the holdup, but was released on Nov. 13 after prosecutors failed to win an indictment.

By law, prosecutors had only 144 hours from the time he was busted to get a grand jury to indict him.

Delvalle's lawyer, Bryan Konoski, said he was released because the case against him relied on only one witness and jurors didn't believe it was enough to prove probable cause.

Delvalle is an ex-con who served eight years for a killing a 21-year-old woman in The Bronx in 1992. The woman, Shemique Coleman, was an innocent bystander who was hit in the head with a bullet when Delvalle fired wildly into a crowd on a sidewalk in the Bronx, according to court records.

His parole for that slaying ended on the day he was released in the poker heist case.

The holdup allegedly netted the thieves $100,000 and cost DeSena, a father of a 16-year-old son from Wayne, NJ, his life.

DeSena, a math teacher at the Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, had master's degrees in business, computer science and philosophy.

He was shot in the chest after one of the raiders dropped a shotgun, and it went off as he was picking it up.

It's not clear why police kept Perez's arrest quiet, but they also kept a lid on Delvalle's bust to give them more time to pursue other suspects in the heist who are still at large.

News Added: 06 December, 2007

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