Man gets life in prison for killing of woman
A judge sentenced Alexis Ramos-Rivera this week to life in prison for killing an Osceola County woman during a 2018 botched murder-for-hire plot, court records show.
A jury found Ramos-Rivera, 26, guilty of first-degree murder Nov. 16 in the slaying of 42-year-old Janice Zengotita-Torres. Because prosecutors did not seek the death penalty, life in prison without parole was the only possible sentence under Florida law.
Prosecutors said Zengotita-Torres was “terrorized” in the final hours of her life by Ramos-Rivera and two other kidnappers — even after they realized she wasn’t their target.
Ramos-Rivera had been hired by Ishnar López-Ramos to kill a romantic rival after losing his job in Puerto Rico when Hurricane María hit the island in 2017, prosecutors said. López-Ramos paid for both Ramos-Rivera and his girlfriend, Glorianmarie Quiñones-Montes, to travel to Central Florida and live in her apartment.
Days before the killing, López-Ramos took the couple to a Ross Dress for Less, where her romantic rival worked. But they mistakenly ended up tracking Zengotita-Torres, another employee at the store, back to her apartment, according to prosecutors.
The trio abducted her in the early hours of Jan. 8, 2018, forcing her into her own SUV.
During the trial at the Osceola County Courthouse, Quiñones-Montes tearfully testified that Zengotita-Torres was cooperative and composed during the abduction and even tried to comfort her.
“At the beginning when I was crying, she was telling me to calm down,” Quiñones-Montes said. “She said she was going to cooperate.”
Zengotita-Torres’ body was found later that day in Ormond Beach with tightly wrapped duct tape and a garbage bag around her head. A medical examiner testified she died of “asphyxiation due to suffocation or smothering.”
Quiñones-Montes and López-Ramos are separately facing first-degree murder charges in the killing.