Smart Gang Member Allegedly Kills Wrong Person

[Law Dawg]

May 3, 2004, 8:35
Marshell Roper, whose daughter was mistakenly gunned down during a
drive-by shooting in New Cassel in 2001, stood up in court Monday and
forgave the man who murdered her only child.
Olvin Reyes, 24, of Roosevelt, had nothing to say before his sentencing,
even after hearing Roper say that while she's angry he shot and killed
her daughter, Jennifer Grimes, 14, she has found the will to forgive.
"Forgiveness has to start somewhere," Roper, 42, of Huntington Station,
said in an interview afterward. "Just looking at him makes my stomach
turn, but what am I going to benefit by hating him?"
Reyes' attorney, John Garzon, of Sunnyside, Queens, failed to persuade
Nassau County Court Judge Joseph C. Calabrese in Mineola to be lenient.
"I asked the judge to try to be lenient only because his family was
suffering as much as the victim's family," Garzon said.
Calabrese sentenced Reyes to the maximum term of 25 years to life in
prison, the same punishment his co-defendant, Marvin Osorio, 21, of
Westbury, received last month.
Assistant District Attorney Michael Walsh said Reyes and Osorio, the
car's driver, were members of the MS-13 gang. On Aug. 26, 2001, the men
and two others were cruising the streets looking for members of a rival
gang, the Bloods, to settle a dispute. Walsh said they came upon Grimes
and two of her friends hanging out at the corner of Rushmore Street and
Broadway. None of them belonged to a gang, Walsh said. Reyes and his
group targeted the young man with Grimes because he was wearing a shirt
with red letters on it, and believing he was a Blood, Reyes decided to
shoot him, Walsh said.
The car passed Grimes and her friends three times. The last time the
car's lights were off, and Reyes and Osorio put on bandanas concealing
their faces. Reyes opened fire but missed, and one of the two bullets
struck Grimes in the chest, killing her.
The other two occupants in the car with Reyes and Osorio were not
charged with any crimes, said Walsh, because they did not know that
Reyes was planning to shoot anyone.
Reyes and Osorio were found guilty of second-degree murder by separate
juries.
"This could have been anyone who had the misfortune of wearing the wrong
color clothes," Walsh said.

"The demand of the hour in America is for jurors with conscience, judges
with courage, and prisons which are neither country clubs nor health
resorts. It is not the criminals, actual or potential, that need a
neuropathic hospital; it is the people who slobber over them in an
effort to find excuses for their crime."
Judge Alfred J. Talley

[kevin...@gmail.com]

is this public information? I'd like to know more about this case