Judge imposes long prison terms for shooting death

Slain woman was not the two men’s intended target

SCHENECTADY — A judge doled out lengthy prison sentences Wednesday to the man who fired the fatal shot and one of his accomplices who helped plan a gang-related attack in 2020 that led to the death of an innocent woman who was sitting on the porch outside her Mont Pleasant home when she was killed, according to the Schenectady County District Attorney’s Office.

Prosecutors have said 31-year-old Jennifer Ostrander, a mother of seven children, was not Tito Garcia’s intended target.

Her mother gave a victim impact statement in court on Wednesday.

The 30-year-old Garcia received 20 years to life for pleading guilty last year to second-degree murder, while Daquan Smith, 31, was sentenced to 18 years for admitting to manslaughter in December.

Prosecutors said the two were among several armed men with connections to the Bloods street gang who traveled to Schenectady in search of rival Crips gang members to shoot when they opened fire at the Sixth Avenue home on Aug. 2, 2020.

“This was all part of a big, elaborate plan where they brought 13 people in and recruited people from other parts of the state and passed out guns, picked shooters, formed a car caravan, it was a plan to go out looking for people,” said prosecutor Christina Tremantepelham during a phone interview after the sentencing took place before Schenectady County Court Judge Matthew Sypniewski. “They either saw someone or something that signified a Crips.”

Smith is from Binghamton.

Three shooters got out of the vehicles and shot at a group of men on Ostrander’s porch whom they believed to be Crips.

None of the men were injured, but Ostrander was killed by the first shot, which struck her head.

Two other defendants pleaded guilty. John White, 37, who drove the car with the shooters inside, pleaded guilty to one count of seconddegree criminal possession of a weapon. He is expected to receive 12 years in prison when he is sentenced.

Tyricke Walker, 27, who gave a gun to one of the shooters, admitted to second-degree criminal possession of a weapon. He will face seven to 12 years behind bars.

Marchello Rizzo, 25, who also supplied a gun to one of the shooters, pleaded guilty to the same charge as Walker and agreed to a sentence with a cap of 12 years in prison.

Rizzo, Walker and White will learn their fate on March. 15.

Joel Johnson, 24, who was a shooter, confessed to one count of seconddegree criminal possession of a weapon and one count of first-degree reckless endangerment. He will face up to 12 years in prison on the weapons charge, and anywhere from two-and-a-third to seven years on the charge of reckless endangerment, to be served concurrently. His sentencing is March 23.

A 17-year-old also charged in the case died in a youth detention facility in October after being incarcerated for more than two years and was an unwitting participant in the gang-related slaying. The teenager, who has been identified by officials familiar with his death as Caprist Mcbrown, died Oct. 27 at the Capital District Juvenile Secure Detention Facility in Colonie.

Sources have told the Times Union that Mcbrown had been ill in the days before his death.