On a Wednesday afternoon in the Bronx, 45-year-old Hispanic female Maribel Cavero Reyes was walking down East 154th Street when her life was tragically cut short. It was November 2, 2016, at approximately 12:40 p.m., when a shootout erupted between several men in the Melrose neighborhood. Cavero Reyes was an unintended victim, struck in the chest by a stray bullet in the midst of the chaos. A witness reported hearing her scream before she collapsed on the street.
Emergency services arrived to find her with a gunshot wound to the torso, and she was rushed to Lincoln Medical Center, where she was pronounced dead.
The investigation into the senseless killing quickly focused on a teenage suspect. Police identified 17-year-old Orlando Oquendo as the individual who fired the fatal shot while chasing another man down the street. Just two days after the shooting, Oquendo was arrested and subsequently charged with murder, manslaughter, and criminal possession of a weapon. Authorities determined that Cavero Reyes was an innocent bystander who had no connection to her killer.
In the end, Orlando Oquendo, who was 18 at the time of sentencing, was convicted of first-degree manslaughter. During the court proceedings, a heart-wrenching victim impact statement from Maribel Cavero Reyes's mother was read aloud. She described her daughter as a "lovely and hardworking woman without vices or any sort of evilness" and spoke of the profound pain and injustice her family was suffering. Oquendo offered a brief apology for the pain he had caused before he was sentenced to 15 years in prison, to be followed by five years of post-release supervision.
