WHITE PLAINS, NY (November 30, 2023) — Tommy Rivera, 18, of New Rochelle was sentenced to 19 years of incarceration for the January 2022 fatal shooting of 16-year-old Julian Oliveros in New Rochelle.
“Today’s sentence is a sobering reminder that gun violence knows no boundaries, and it has irrevocable consequences for victims, their families, and communities,” said Westchester County District Attorney Miriam E. Rocah. “We must stop guns from getting in the hands of young people.”
Rivera was prosecuted as an adolescent offender, and pleaded guilty on March 17 to Manslaughter in the First Degree, a felony. He will also be subject to five years of post-release supervision upon his release.
On Jan. 25, 2022, at approximately 3:38 p.m., the defendant, who was 16 years old at the time, used an un-serialized 9 mm semi-automatic pistol—a ghost gun—to shoot the victim four times, striking him in the lower back, knee, neck and shoulder, as he walked on Fourth Street in New Rochelle. The incident was captured on surveillance video. The victim was transported to Westchester Medical Center in Valhalla, where he died that day.
The New Rochelle Police Department arrested the defendant shortly after the incident near Glen Place and Beechwood Avenue in New Rochelle. Police recovered the murder weapon from the defendant’s waistband, and subsequently recovered tools used to build ghost guns in his home. Ghost guns are untraceable, fully functioning illegal firearms that can be easily assembled at home with parts purchased online and are designed to evade certain gun laws.
In a statement in Spanish read in court, the victim’s mother said: (translated) “On the evening of January 25, 2022, the life of my home changed forever…a part of our soul dies with my son…what sustains us is the solace that comes from recalling our time together.”
The case was before Judge Helen Blackwood in the Youth Part and prosecuted by Senior Assistant District Attorney Catalina Blanco Buitrago of the Trials and Investigations Division.
Reaction by school and city officials at the time to the student-on-student murder of Julian Oliveros by Tommy Rivera, both Hispanic, in the South End was almost non-existent compared to the circus put on by Noam Bramson after the murder Valaree Schwab, a white student, by Z’inah Brown, a black student in the North End.
The City School District of New Rochelle denied on the day of his murder that Julian Oliveros was a student at New Rochelle High School, claiming he had “previously attended New Rochelle High School” and the student “hadn’t been in school in some time”. Subsequent testimony in the Westchester County Court – Youth Part revealed those statements to be entirely false.
Julian Oliveros was one of four students arrested for the arson fire at Wildcliff, according to police sources.
Talk of the Sound was first on scene and broke the story of the shooting.
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