'Junior' Guzman Killing: 5 Convicted of Hacking Innocent Teenager to DeathMembers of the Trinitarios gang were hunting for enemies in the Bronx last summer when they found a 15-year-old boy on his phone and walking alone.
Mistaking him for a member of a rival set, the gang chased the boy, Lesandro Guzman-Feliz, for blocks in the Belmont section of the Bronx, prosecutors said. The desperate teenager tried to hide inside of a bodega, but the gang members dragged him from the store and stabbed him to death as security cameras recorded the gruesome scene.
Lesandro Guzman-Feliz, who went by the nickname Junior, was a member of the Police Department's Law Enforcement Explorers program before he was killed last year.
Nearly a year after Lesandro was killed, a jury found five of the men guilty of murder and related charges on Friday, capping five weeks of testimony that provided a rare glimpse into the inner workings of the Trinitarios, a highly organized and brutally violent Dominican gang.
The jury of 11 women and a man took only two days to decide the fates of the defendants — Jonaiki Martinez Estrella, 25, Antonio Rodriguez Hernandez Santiago, 25, Jose Muniz, 23, Manuel Rivera, 19, and Elvin Garcia, 25.
The panel found all five guilty of first-degree murder, second-degree murder, second-degree conspiracy and second-degree gang assault. They face a maximum sentence of life in prison without parole on the murder conviction. Seven others are awaiting trial.
The murder of Lesandro, who went by the nickname Junior, was well documented on videotape from security cameras and the cellphones of witnesses, providing prosecutors with hard proof to support their case.
But some of the most powerful evidence came from two gang members involved in the attack who testified for the prosecution in return for lenient sentences: Kevin Alvarez, 20, and Michael Reyes, 20.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/14/nyregion/lesandro-guzman-murder-trinitarios-verdict.html?action=click&module=News&pgtype=Homepage
