Accused killer of ‘Junior’ Guzman-Feliz asked me to lie to cops: ex-girlfriend
The former girlfriend of a gangbanger on trial for the murder of an innocent Bronx teen held back tears in court Tuesday as she described how her beau asked her to lie to cops.
Yudelvi Mena, 21, a third-year medical student, told Bronx Supreme Court jurors that then-boyfriend Elvin Garcia instructed her to lie about a wound on his hand after 15-year-old Lesandro “Junior” Guzman-Feliz was stabbed to death outside a Bronx bodega in June 2018.
Mena told the prosecution that the pair had gone to New York-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center in the early hours of July 21 to treat Garcia’s severely wounded hand, which was bleeding after Junior’s murder on the night of July 20.
“He had a hole through his hand, basically,” she said. “It was still bleeding.”
Detectives met the pair at the hospital, and Mena lied, telling them her beau sustained the hand injury in a fight over her.
“Did he discuss what he’d say to the police?” asked Assistant District Attorney Morgan Dolan.
“That he got into a fight in a park because of me,” mumbled a tearful Mena, who kept her head down and covered her face with her arms as she testified.
In reality, prosecutors say, Garcia was one of five suspected Trinitarios gang members who hacked Junior with knives and a machete outside a Bronx bodega in a case of mistaken identity.
Mena told the court how she and her beau had initially gone to Philadelphia to stay with one of Garcia’s uncles after the murder but were summoned back to New York by police, who questioned the pair separately before eventually charging 19-year-old Garcia with murder.
She said that at one point before his arrest, Garcia even pointed himself out to her in viral videos of the slaying while showing no remorse.
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She told the prosecution she knew Garcia — then her boyfriend of six months — was a member of “Los Sures,” a set of the Bronx Trinitarios gang.
At the time of his arrest, Garcia’s lawyer bizarrely compared the injury on his client’s hand to the wounds of Christ.
Court-appointed defense lawyer Steven Kaiser claimed during a Bronx Criminal Court arraignment last year that Garcia suffered a wound through his left hand “a la stigmata” before he allegedly attacked Junior.
Catholics believe stigmata is the miraculous appearance of wounds similar to those suffered by Christ during the Crucifixion.
The lawyer also whined that the cut was made worse by rough treatment by the NYPD after Garcia’s arrest.
The trial, now in its fourth week, has been checkered with drama, with Junior’s mom repeatedly screaming and sobbing in court in response to grisly CCTV footage of her son’s murder.
Last week, court officers had to restrain and remove a screaming Leandra Feliz before Judge Robert Neary blasted her as “hysterical.”
Junior’s father, Lisandro Guzman, was in court Tuesday morning, but his mother was absent for the proceedings, which began three hours late.
Two defendants were also missing from Tuesday’s proceedings. Neary said they “voluntarily excluded themselves from court” but would not comment on why the pair, who are identified, were absent.
