5 BUSTED IN TEEN MACHETE MURDER
‘Mistake slay’ gang nailed as kid’s ma rips apology
They’ll need more than apologies.
Police hauled five suspects into custody for the brutal mistaken-identity killing of a Bronx teenager last week, NYPD sources said Sunday.
Cops tracked one suspect in the slaying to the Dominican Republic, and found as many as three more hiding in Paterson, N.J., sources said. The fifth suspect is in custody in the Bronx.
Police identified one of them as Kevin Alvarez, 19, of Van Nest, the Bronx, late Sunday night. He’s charged with murder, manslaughter, gang assault and assault. Charges against the others were pending.
The parents of Lesandro’s friends gathered outside the 48th Precinct stationhouse late Sunday night to get a glimpse of Alvarez as police led him outside.
“Chupacabra! F--- you!” yelled Janet Zorilla, one of the parents. “You a------! He was just a baby!”
Lesandro’s mom, Leandra Feliz, said the arrests were little consolation for the loss of her beloved son.
“I don’t really feel happy. They have to pay for what they did. They killed an innocent little child,” she said. “The only thing I want is my son back, and I’m not going to have him anymore.”
The killers who dragged 15-year-old Lesandro (Junior) Guzman-Feliz out of a Belmont deli Wednesday, then hacked him to death with machetes, sent mea culpa messages to the teen’s family on Facebook, saying they murdered the wrong target by mistake.
Surveillance and cell phone video captured the killing in horrifying detail, showing a group of men dragging Lesandro out of the Cruz and Chiky Grocery store on the corner of E. 183rd St. and Bathgate Ave. They tossed him to the ground and repeatedly hacked and stabbed him as they pulled him along the sidewalk. Lesandro desperately tried to shield himself, then ran to St. Barnabas Hospital about two blocks away as blood gushed from his wounds.
Cops were looking into the possibility that the men were seeking to settle a score over a sex tape circulating on social media, which shows a teen boy rapping, while a second teen boy has sex with a teen girl whose face is covered with a shirt.
The messages, Lesandro’s family members said, were an attempt by the killers to clear the slain teen’s name, but that made no difference to his devastated mom.
“There’s no sorry to bring back my son,” Feliz said. “No sorry is ever going to bring him back. Nothing is going to.”
Lesandro, who was a member of the NYPD’s Explorers program, dreamed of becoming a police officer.
“He wanted to be a detective to investigate and to help people,” said his brother Matty Ortiz, 31.
Even so, his family has yet to hear from Mayor de Blasio or NYPD Commissioner James O’Neill, his mom said.
“No, no one called me. Nothing,” she said.