Diego Suero Lorenzo, accused in the case of the murder of Junior Guzmán Feliz.
Photo: Mariela Lombard / The NY Journal
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More than four years after the brutal homicide with machetes of the fifteen-year-old Lesandro “Junior” Guzman Feliz in a warehouse in the Bronx (NYC), two new sentences were issued yesterday.
Diego Suero (33) and Frederick Then (24), “Trinitarios” gang leaders, They were convicted Friday of second-degree murder in the attack caught on security cameras on June 20, 2018.
He then NYPD Commissioner James O’Neill, accustomed to dealing with crime, stated that the video of that homicide “It’s probably one of the worst things I’ve ever seen” in their life.
According to prosecutors, Suero and Then ordered the killing of the 15-year-old, who was dragged from a warehouse in Tremont and stabbed to death, because they apparently mistook him for another boy. Both face 25 years to life in prison when sentenced in September, reported ABC News. Five other gang members had already been convicted in October 2019 for Guzmán’s murder.
“I will never forgive them for deciding to kill my son. You are and will always be a danger to society (…) My hope is that another family never has to live with the pain of losing a child, “he said at the time in court. the victim’s father, Lisandro Guzmán.
The murder launched an international social media movement under the hashtag #justiceforjunior seeking justice for the teenager. attacked by gang members armed with machetes and knives in the middle of the street, and who ran bleeding until he collapsed in a hospital in the Bronx.
They are Dominican mother, Leandra Feliz, became the face of mourning and has since been advocating for a bill to install panic buttons in all warehouses in New York. “My son has already passed away,” he said last year. “They killed my son. We have to protect our future children and our community.”
At the time of the crime, Feliz worked as a housekeeper in the Intensive Care Unit at St. Barnabas Hospital, the same one where her son was declared dead.
A total of 15 men were charged in connection with the brutal stabbing of Guzmán, including two that became witnesses who cooperated with the prosecution.
In New York, the interior and surroundings of warehouses are frequently crime scenes, both robberies and homicides. Until the beginning of July, there had been reports 195 NYC warehouse robberies in 2022, according to the police.
attacks are common to employees, customers and neighbors. in January, A woman and her pit bull dog were killed in a shooting inside a Brooklyn grocery store. At the end of November, an 18-year-old died after being shot several timesbeing a client of a warehouse in Staten Island (NYC). And in October a Immigrant store clerk stabbed to death in East Harlem, in an apparent argument over 50 cents off the price of a cigarette.
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