A 29-year-old man was carjacked, viciously beaten and shot to death after one of his killers took offense to him parking in “her” spot outside her Long Island home, Suffolk County prosecutors said Tuesday as they announced the indictment of seven suspects.
Linver Alexander Ortiz Ponce, a complete stranger to the suspects, innocently parked his red Camaro outside a home on Fifth Ave. in Bay Shore just before midnight Sept. 16, 2022 — unwittingly setting the chain of events into motion that ended with him left dead in a church parking lot.
“The alleged murder in this case occurred with no provocation and for no good reason,” Suffolk County District Attorney Raymond Tierney said Tuesday. “No one deserves to suffer a violent death for simply parking a car. The alleged brutality showed here is unconscionable.”
Ortiz Ponce had the misfortune of happening to park outside the home of Kayla Alvarenga.
Alvarenga, now 22, demanded Ortiz Ponce move his car from the public spot but he refused, prosecutors said. Outraged, Alvarenga called her friend Christopher Perdomo, now 27, to her home, asking him to “take care” of Ortiz Ponce.
Perdomo and three teens, who at the time were between 16 and 17, showed up in a BMW they had carjacked in another section of Bay Shore hours earlier, according to authorities.
Perdomo and the teens pulled Ortiz Ponce from the Camaro and beat him, prosecutors say.
Ortiz Ponce managed to escape, running to a Shell gas station a short distance away, where he was caught on surveillance cameras hiding behind several vehicles.
Once the victim ran off, Alvarenga told Perdomo and the rest of her friends to fan out and find him.
Two more teens joined Alvarenga and Perdomo in the search. Using Ortiz Ponce’s abandoned Camaro and the carjacked BMW, the group split up and searched up and down Fifth Ave. until they spotted their victim hiding out at the gas station, according to court papers.
Surveillance video recovered at the scene shows Perdomo and his crew grabbing Ortiz Ponce at gunpoint and forcing him into the BMW. Ortiz Ponce is seen trying to fight off Perdomo as he’s thrown into the car, prosecutors said.
Once they abducted the victim, Alvarenga recommended they go to a church parking lot on Holbrook St. because she didn’t believe there were any surveillance cameras there, prosecutors said.
Perdomo repeatedly pistol-whipped Ortiz Ponce as they drove about six miles to the Jesus House of Prayer Church of God parking lot — where a surveillance camera was in fact installed, prosecutors said.
Once there, each suspect pounded on Ortiz Ponce, who was so badly hurt he could only crawl away from his captors, prosecutors say surveillance footage shows. That’s when Perdomo, at Alvarenga’s orders, shot Ortiz Ponce dead, according to prosecutors.
Ortiz Ponce died in the parking lot by the time first responders arrived.
Meanwhile, Perdomo and the teens abandoned the victim’s Camaro in a thatch of woods in Smithtown, prosecutors say. The stolen BMW was ditched in Brentwood. A short time later, Perdomo and the teens took an Uber back to Alvarenga’s home, where they split up the money in Ortiz Ponce’s wallet, prosecutors said.
The investigation into Alvarenga and Perdomo began to build in February after Suffolk County cops nabbed one of the teens allegedly involved in the killing, the first arrest in the case. The four other teens are not in custody with charges pending.
Perdomo was nabbed in Georgia earlier this month. He had moved to Georgia in May, prosecutors said.
Perdomo was extradited back to Long Island on Oct. 16 and a judge ordered him held without bail on murder, kidnapping and robbery charges. He’s facing life in prison if convicted, prosecutors said.
“No one should jump to conclusions today,” Perdomo’s attorney Robert Gottlieb told the Daily News Thursday.
“I assure you that the truth about what happened and why and who bears responsibility will become very clear as this case proceeds.”
Alvarenga will be arraigned on murder and similar charges on Oct. 30, prosecutors said. This is the second time she’s been charged with murder.
She is already in prison for her role in a botched 2021 robbery of a marijuana dealer in Huntington in which a friend of the dealer was fatally shot, officials said.
She and three others had planned to rip off the marijuana dealer on Oct. 27, 2021. During the heist someone fired a shot through a closed garage door, striking Louis Lombardo.
Alvarenga and co-defendant Jonray Perez were both armed with guns and outside the garage door when the shot was fired, although it wasn’t clear who actually pulled the trigger.
Alvarenga was indicted on murder and robbery charges in January 2023, about four months after Ortiz Ponce was killed, and was ultimately convicted of robbery in April. She was sentenced to 17 years in prison and won’t be up for parole until 2037.
