Walter Ross, a 33-year-old Black man, was killed in broad daylight on September 12, 2016, after gunfire tore into a car stopped on North Clinton Avenue near Burbank Street in Rochester, New York. Police said he was shot while inside the vehicle and pronounced dead at the scene. A second person in the car, the driver, was struck in the leg/lower body but survived and was treated at the hospital before being released.
In the first hours after the shooting, investigators described the attack as targeted rather than random, but there was no public suspect or immediate arrest to explain who had walked up to the car and opened fire. Neighbors and outreach workers were drawn into the aftermath as the scene settled into the familiar hush of yellow tape, shaken witnesses, and a family receiving the worst kind of news on a city street.
Years later, federal prosecutors tied the killing to a drug-trafficking organization operating in Rochester and framed Ross’s death as an enforcement-style hit rooted in turf and rivalry. According to court filings described in federal press releases, Jonathan Cruz-Carmona—described as an enforcer for an organization led by Carlos Javier Figueroa—spotted Ross near Clinton Avenue and Burbank Street, a neighborhood prosecutors said had been claimed as the organization’s territory. Prosecutors said Cruz-Carmona had previously warned Ross not to sell drugs in the area, and that on September 12, 2016, he approached the car Ross was sitting in and fired several shots through the window, killing him.
The case ultimately moved through federal court. Cruz-Carmona pleaded guilty to murder with a firearm in furtherance of a drug trafficking crime, a charge that carried a mandatory minimum sentence and the possibility of life in prison. In September 2020, he was sentenced to 25 years in federal prison for the killing.
Prosecutors also pursued the organization’s leader. Figueroa was convicted by a federal jury on charges that included narcotics conspiracy, firearms offenses, and murder while engaged in the narcotics conspiracy, and he was later sentenced to life in prison plus 25 years. Federal authorities said Figueroa provided the 9mm handgun used in Ross’s murder, and they linked that same weapon to later violence during a January 29, 2018 law-enforcement raid, when co-defendant Obed Torres Garcia allegedly fired at police officers.
