Manuel Mateo, 51, a man from New York City, came to Buffalo on August 7, 2014, and by late afternoon the visit had turned deadly on Herkimer Street on the city's West Side. Police responding to gunfire found him mortally wounded on the 300 block, and he was declared dead at the scene. Early information that spread in the first hours was messy and even included a correction about his age, but detectives quickly treated the shooting as a targeted killing and began looking for a single suspect who fled after the shots.
Court records and prosecutors later described the day as one that spiraled out of a drug-related dispute. Witness accounts summarized in later filings painted a tense street scene: a vehicle pulling up near a residence on Herkimer, an argument in Spanish about drugs, and a threat that foreshadowed what came next. When the shooting happened, the gunman ran off and the neighborhood was left with the sudden stillness that follows violence—neighbors outside, police sealing off the area, and investigators chasing fragments of description and direction.
Months later, the case narrowed to a suspect authorities said had ties to the address near where the confrontation unfolded. The Erie County District Attorney's Office announced that Abimael Ayala-Gonzalez, of Lorain, Ohio—known by several nicknames—had been indicted and would be arraigned on charges of second-degree murder and second-degree criminal possession of a weapon. Prosecutors alleged Mateo was shot at 351 Herkimer Street, and they said Ayala-Gonzalez was apprehended in Lorain and extradited to Buffalo on a murder warrant.
The case did not end with the arrest. At trial, the prosecution built its narrative from multiple witnesses and strands of circumstantial proof about who was present, what was said, and how the shooter moved immediately after the gunfire. A jury convicted Ayala-Gonzalez of second-degree murder and second-degree criminal possession of a weapon in May 2016, with prosecutors again framing the killing as rooted in a dispute over drugs, and sentencing was scheduled for mid-June 2016.
Sentencing brought a heavy finality: reports later stated Ayala-Gonzalez received 15 years to life in state prison, following the jury's verdict. Appeals followed as the case continued through the courts; the Appellate Division, Fourth Department, unanimously affirmed the conviction in December 2018, and later filings noted that New York's Court of Appeals denied leave to appeal in March 2019.
