One of the men accused of brutally butchering helpless Lesandro ‘Junior’ Guzman-Feliz outside of a Bronx bodega last year bragged about the moment he administered a fatal stab to the teenager’s neck, a courtroom heard on Friday.
According to Trinitarios gang member and cooperating witness Michael Sosa Reyes, murder suspect Jonaiki Martinez Estrella callously bragged that his victim was ‘not going to eat for a very long time because I hit him in the neck’ as the killers fled the scene.
In truth, prosecutors claim Estrella did more than just strike Guzman in the neck. They say his four-and-a-half inch knife sliced the defenseless 15-year-old’s jugular vein, later causing him to bleed to death, breathless.
Addressing the courtroom in Spanish, Reyes’ harrowing testimony drew several gasps from spectators in the gallery.
One of the men accused of brutally butchering helpless Lesandro ‘Junior’ Guzman-Feliz outside of a Bronx bodega last year bragged about the moment he administered a fatal stab to the teenager’s neck, a courtroom heard on Friday
According to Trinitarios gang member and cooperating witness Michael Sosa Reyes (left), murder suspect Jonaiki Martinez Estrella (right) callously bragged that his victim was ‘not going to eat for a very long time because I hit him in the neck’ as the killers fled the scene
Thumbs up: Leandra Feliz, Junior’s mother, returned to the courtroom on Friday for the first time in more than two weeks
He added that ringleader Diego Suero ordered his disciples from the ‘Bad Boys’ crew to inflict ‘any kind of damage’ on rival gang members that fateful evening on June 20, 2018.
Reyes recalled how the gang gathered inside Suero’s apartment, just one block away from the bodega on East 183rd Street and Bathgate Avenue, where Junior was later slain.
‘Go after Sunset, you know what you have to do,’ Suero allegedly told his men.
Reyes said he interpreted the order to mean, ‘If you have a gun, shoot it, if you a have a knife, you stab, if you have a machete, you use it.’
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ShareShortly afterwards, the gang members spotted aspiring NYPD detective Junior walking the streets and mistook him for a notorious member of the rival Sunset Crew.
At first the men perused him in cars, before hunting him down the terrified young teen on foot.
Reyes recalled for the jury the moment he chased Junior inside the bodega, falsely telling the shopkeeper the boy had ‘done something’ to his grandmother, and needed to be dealt with.
The gang members spotted aspiring NYPD detective Junior walking the streets and mistook him for a notorious member of the rival Sunset Crew
Reyes watched on as other members of the Trinitarios gang dragged Junior out of the shop by his ankles, and savagely hacked away at him with knives and a machete on the corner of the street
However, Reyes said he couldn’t find it within himself to go through with Suero’s order after looking Junior in the eyes and seeing just how petrified he was.
‘At the moment I saw his face, my eyes changed. I saw he was scared, and he reminded me of a person that I had seen before,’ Reyes told the court.
Instead, he watched on as other members of the Trinitarios gang dragged Junior out of the shop by his ankles, and savagely hacked away at him with knives and a machete on the corner of the street.
Reyes made no attempt to intervene in the murderous onslaught.
‘He was hiding ... [screaming] ‘No! No! No!”’ recounted Reyes.
‘He was scared. When they dragged him out, he’s laying down fighting for his life. I saw [the defendants] pulling him, grabbing him…attacking him with a machete.’
The last time Leandra appeared in court she was forced to re-live her son’s final moments as the courtroom was played several angles of CCTV footage, documenting Junior’s graphic demise
Rather than having to be restrained and removed by officials as she died on May 23, a resilient Leandra left the court by her own accord on Friday afternoon
Reyes added that he felt ‘very bad’ about the murder, describing how he later fled to the Dominican Republic the following day after learning he was ‘present in a murder’.
He returned to the country the following day and handed himself in. He later struck a plea deal with prosecutors in August, agreeing to testify against his fellow gang members.
‘I explained to her what happened and she told me that I had to come back and face my consequences,’ Reyes said of confessing to his mother, the New York Post reported.
An outraged friend of Junior’s lambasted Reyes to the NY Daily News, insisting he was no better than the murderous assailants he was testifying against.
‘You have a cell phone, call 911,’ Erica Tirado said to the outlet. ‘Have somebody come and help that boy before they killed him. [Reyes] didn’t do nothing, nothing at all. So I see him as guilty as the rest.’
The gang members spotted aspiring NYPD detective Junior walking the streets and mistook him for a notorious member of the rival Sunset Crew
Leandra Feliz, Junior’s mother, returned to the courtroom on Friday for the first time in more than two weeks.
During her last appearance she was forced to re-live her son’s final moments as the courtroom was played several angles of CCTV footage, documenting Junior’s graphic demise.
‘I closed my eyes… It was torture, like killing me alive,’ the teen’s mother Leandra Feliz said outside Bronx Supreme Court on May 23.
Feliz was seen placing a hand over her mouth when the video began, attempting to stifle her cries as she relived the moment her son was dragged through the doors of the bodega.
Court officers had to then restrain and remove her from the courtroom as she ‘hysterically’ wailed uncontrollably into the arms of a family member.
The trial, now in its fourth week, will continue on Monday.
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