Third Defendant Gets 212 Years in Racially-Motivated, MS-13 Schoolyard Murders in Newark

 
Terrance Aeriel, 18, bottom l, Dashon Harvey, 20, top r; and Iofemi Hightower, 20, top l were murdered by being shot, execution-style; Natasha Aeriel, 19, bottom r, was shot in the head, but survived.

Alexander Alfaro, one of the MS-13 mass murderers.
 
By Nicholas Stix

New York Post/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Posted: 4:08 PM, May 19, 2011.
Last Updated: 4:09 PM, May 19, 2011.

NEWARK, N.J. — The third of six defendants in a Newark, N.J., schoolyard triple murder has been sentenced to more than 200 years in prison.

Alexander Alfaro was 16 at the time of the 2007 schoolyard killings that shocked New Jersey’s largest city and led to anti-crime reforms. He was convicted last month.

The slain victims — Terrance Aeriel, Dashon Harvey and Iofemi (eye-OH’-feh-mee) Hightower — were attending or about to attend Delaware State University. A fourth friend survived the attack.

Two other defendants are serving consecutive life sentences for the murders. Three defendants are awaiting possible trial dates.

Alfaro received 60 years each on two of the murders and 75 years on the third murder, to run consecutively. He also was sentenced to a consecutive term of 17 years for armed robbery.

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Aren’t those bisexual glasses a darling touch? Defense attorneys routinely do that with their most murderous, psychopathic clients, the way Lemaricus Davidson’s defenders Doug Trant and David M. Eldridge did in seeking to save him from the death penalty for murdering Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom, in the Knoxville Horror case. In Davidson’s case, it didn’t work because of Davidson’s own stupidity, in refusing since disgraced presiding Judge Richard Baumgartner’s offer to racially rig the jury pool with blacks from neighboring Davidson County.

Killers like Davidson and Alfaro wouldn't be caught dead on the street with glasses on.
 
Memorial at the scene of the crime, early August, 2007.
 
Note that:

1. Alfaro and his fellow illegal alien invader fiends committed this atrocity almost four years ago, on August 4, 2007, and he is only now getting even a measure of justice;
2. New Jersey does not have the death penalty, thus ensuring that Alfaro & Co. never meet justice;
3. The odds are very much against any of these monsters dying of old age in prison; if they are not dispatched by fellow prisoners, they will surely see their sentences commuted at some point; and
4. The Vichycon New York Post, whose owner, Rupert Murdoch, is addressed by his master, Al Sharpton, as “bitch,” devoted all of 130 words to the story.

Contrast the Post’s virtual non-coverage with that of the Newark Star-Ledger.

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Alexander Alfaro is sentenced to 212 years in prison for role in Newark schoolyard slayings
Published: Thursday, May 19, 2011, 3:50 PM Updated: Thursday, May 19, 2011, 6:52 PM
By Alexi Friedman/The Star-Ledger

James Harvey, father of Dashon Harvey, speaks at the sentencing of Alexander Alfaro
 

NEWARK — Alexander Alfaro has been sentenced this afternoon to 212 years in prison for his part in the August 2007 Newark schoolyard triple killings, following emotional testimony from parents and relatives of the college-aged victims.

Last month, a jury convicted Alfaro on 16 of 17 counts — including three counts of murder — in the brutal killings behind Mount Vernon School in the city's Ivy Hill section. Superior Court Judge Michael L. Ravin in Newark imposed the sentence. Alfaro must serve 180 years before he is eligible for parole.

Prosecutors said six young men set upon four college-age friends that night. Three of the victims were lined up against a wall and shot in the back of the head. They died. A fourth was shot in the face but survived.

Alfaro, 20, becomes the third defendant in the case to receive consecutive life sentences. His half brother, Rodolfo Godinez, was convicted last spring following a trial; and Melvin Jovel, who admitted he shot all four victims, pleaded guilty four months later. Three more defendants are still awaiting trial. Prosecutors have linked all six men to a violent Central American street gang, and have called the killings gang-motivated.

PREVIOUS COVERAGE:

• Third defendant in Newark schoolyard trial is convicted of murder
• Di Ionno: Newark schoolyard slayings unite three families in grief
• Defense attorney in Newark schoolyard killings says there is no physical evidence to tie Alfaro to slayings
• Judge denies prosecutor's request to change definition of 'duress' in Newark schoolyard slayings trial
• Judge allows jury to consider duress defense in Newark schoolyard slayings

Alfaro, clad in a green jail uniform entered the courtroom in handcuffs, and wearing the same thick black eyeglasses he had on throughout trial. When Ravin asked Alfaro if he wanted to say anything, he stood up, and answered, “No, your honor.“ It was all he said.

His attorney, Raymond Morasse, argued for a lesser sentence, saying his client was forced into the gang life by Godinez, and never willingly took part in the killings.

Before imposing sentence, the judge, said while it was true Godinez had influence on the younger man, Alfaro "willfully embraced that gang. That’s the life he wanted. It enticed him." Alfaro, he said has accepted no responsibility for the crime, and has shown no remorse to the families.

Using graphic language and clearly angry, the judge said of Hightower's injuries, "the machete-wielding Alexander Alfaro hacked her head and hacked her body. . . The force he used to hack her skull with the machete was such that the blade was embedded in her skull and he had to pry the blade out. That’s the evidence. That’s the evidence of what he did.

That’s how Alfaro sent her to the after-life."

Killed that night were Iofemi Hightower and Dashon Harvey, both 20, and Terrance Aeriel, 18. Natasha Aeriel, 19 at the time and Terrance’s sister, was shot in the head but survived. Aeriel was in court today, did not speak.

During the month-long trial, Alfaro’s recorded statement to police following his arrest was played. In it, he admitted to cutting Hightower but said Godinez ordered him to do it. In unexpected testimony, Alfaro took the stand, saying it was Godinez, not him, who slashed Hightower with the weapon. He said Godinez, a menacing presence in his life, forced him into the gang life.

But Essex County Assistant Prosecutor Thomas McTigue, who handled the case, called Alfaro an active participant. He told the judge that Alfaro’s role in the killing “added an element of horror to it, which still reverberates through this community. Mr. Alfaro,” he said, “took a machete and savagely inflicted the terrible, terrible wounds” on Hightower that were “savage and barbaric, and they were personal.”

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That’s 625 words in the main text alone, plus another couple hundred words in long captions to the many accompanying photographs, and links to other articles and videos on the case.

Someone is bound to say, “Yeah, but it was a Newark murder.” Newark is a half-hour from Manhattan on the PATH train, and a mass murder carried out by a gang, even of legal citizens, much less criminal invaders, is huge news an hour away, or at least it used to be, even to the New York Times.

But not to the Post. Not today’s Post, anyway. And even the Star-Ledger neglected to: 1. Name the killers’ gang: MS-13; 2. Note that the machete is the gang’s signature weapon; 3. Report that Alfaro was born in Nicaragua; 4. Mention that MS-13 now admits as members immigrants from all over Central and South America; 5. Or recount that the murders were execution-style acts of deliberate racial cleansing, based solely on the fact that the victims were black.