Grieving mother says prison terms were not long enough
SCHENECTADY — The griefstricken mother and other relatives of an innocent woman shot and killed in the summer of 2020 while sitting on the front porch of her Mont Pleasant home expressed outrage Wednesday at the district attorney’s office for the sentences given to three men involved in the case.
“They gave us hope that justice was going to be done,” said an emotional Tina Buskey outside court moments after the men — one of them a close family friend — were sentenced for their role in the death of her daughter Jennifer Ostrander. “I’m angry and it hurts.”
Buskey was joined in the court hallway by several family members, including her daughter, Christina Pike.
“We would have taken it to trial if we knew he was getting two years,” said Pike about the time Marchello Rizzo, who they considered family, will serve in prison when he’s credited for time served.
But Schenectady County District Attorney Robert M. Carney during a phone conversation later Wednesday said he is extremely proud of the hard work by his prosecutors that resulted in convictions of seven defendants in the complex gang-related case.
One of those attorneys, Christina Tremante-pelham, said “we’ve kept them (Ostrander’s family members) informed, and that those were the plea agreements that they pleaded to, and the judge sentenced them accordingly.” She said White was the only one whose plea agreement called for a flat 12-year sentence, that Rizzo “pled with sentence of a cap of 12 years, which means he could get anything up to and including 12 years,” and that Walker’s plea was “with a sentence with a range of 7 to 12, which means he could get any
thing in that range…”
Under heavy security earlier Wednesday, County Court Judge Matthew Sypniewski had the trio brought into the court at the same time so Buskey wouldn’t have to deliver her victim impact statement three separate times.
She told the court that her life was “forever changed” when she found her daughter had died, a tragedy compounded when she later learned that a “close family member” was involved: Rizzo.
“I hope God can forgive you, because I cannot, I cannot,” she said to all three defendants. “I cannot have my baby back, and I hate you all, and I hope you pay for what you have done.”
Buskey and several family members told a reporter afterward they believed based on conversations with prosecutors that defendants, John White, 37, Tyriche Walker, 27 and Rizzo, 25, were to receive 12year prison terms.
In the end, only White, who prosecutors said drove the car with the shooters inside, was sentenced to that penalty.
Though they both could have faced up to 12 years in prison as part of a plea deal that included a cooperation component, Walker received seven years behind bars while Rizzo was sentenced to five. Prosecutors contend Walker and Rizzo supplied a gun to one of the shooters. All three had pleaded guilty to one count of seconddegree criminal possession of a weapon.
In court, Rizzo and White apologized to Ostrander’s fami
ly during separate appearances before the judge.
Authorities have said that Ostrander, a 31-yearold mother of seven children, was not the intended target.
She was killed when, according to prosecutors, several armed men with connections to the Bloods street gang traveled to Schenectady as part of a caravan in search of rival Crips gang members to shoot when they opened fire at the Sixth Avenue home on Aug. 2, 2020.
Tremante-pelham has previously described the violence as “part of a big, elaborate plan” where people from other parts of the state were recruited, guns were passed out, and shooters were picked.
She said after the group “either saw someone or something that signified a Crips,” 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. Last month, Tito Garcia,
30, who prosecutors have said fired the shot that killed Ostrander, received 20 years to life after pleading guilty last year to second-degree murder while Daquan Smith, 31, was sentenced to 18 years for admitting to manslaughter in December.
Joel Johnson, 24, who was a shooter, confessed to one count of second-degree 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 2 ⅓ to seven years on the charge of reckless endangerment, to be served concurrently. His sentencing will be March 23. A 17-year-old also charged 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.