THE BRONX — The mother of slain teen Lesandro “Junior” Guzman-Feliz and officials with the Bronx District Attorney’s Office came to a joint decision Thursday that she will watch the remainder of the murder trial from a separate “overflow” room.
The decision was made two days after Leandra Feliz started screaming in Spanish during the cross-examination of cooperating witness Michael “Sosa” Reyes, and stormed out of the courtroom. She was told not to come back for the rest of the day.
Leandra Feliz and the DA came to the joint agreement on Thursday, according to Christopher A. Carrion, principal attorney and founder at Carrion Law Group, P.C.
Junior’s father, Lisandro Guzman, was present for the morning portion of the day’s proceedings, but left during the lunch break. He had no response to the cross-examination of Reyes.
Reyes, who admitted belonging to the “Bad Boys” set of the Trinitarios from 2014 until April 2018, is one of two cooperating witnesses who has a plea deal. He pleaded guilty to Manslaughter, but the charge would be thrown out and his case dismissed if he complied truthfully throughout the entire trial.
However, on Thursday, Reyes gave several inconsistent responses to the defense team’s questions.
He told Defense Attorney Toni Messina, “you have to understand that everything I mistakenly said was because of everything that was going on. I was confused.
When Messina reminded him that he would not be convicted of Murder 1 and his case would be thrown out if he complied as part of his plea deal, Reyes responded “I will have the family of the victim searching me out to kill me.”
After leaving the courtroom on Tuesday, Leandra Feliz summoned PIX11 to a nearby gas station to explain that she was upset by Reyes’ testimony that one of the men allegedly involved in her son’s death was not a gang member at the time of the 2018 attack.
“Kevin Alvarez has a good offer, time served,” mother Leandra Feliz said of another witness, “and then I’m afraid now Michael ‘Sosa’ Reyes is trying to clean up another one of the Bad Boys.” The Bad Boys being a sect of the Trinitarios gang — several members of which are accused of killing Junior.
Junior’s mom said she got upset during Sosa’s testimony, under cross-examination, that the guy who was riding in his car — known as Philly — was not a Bad Boy Trinitarios member the night Junior was chased and then fatally stabbed on June 20, 2018.
Philly, whose real name is Danilo Payamps Pacheco, is facing charges of murder in the second degree at a later Bronx trial.
“He’s trying to clean him, too,” the mother said on Tuesday about Pacheco.
This is the second outburst the mother has had during the trial.
On May 23, Leandra Feliz started screaming and shaking in her seat during cross-examination of the star witness, Kevin Alvarez, when defense attorney, Kyle Watters, showed footage of Alvarez forcing his way through a glass partition door that separated Junior from the gang members, he forcefully asked the witness, “But for you pushing through that door, Junior would have stayed on the other side of the door.”
The footage later showed Junior being dragged out of the bodega.
It was during another piece of the surveillance — when a mortally wounded Junior stood alone on the sidewalk, clutching his lethal neck wound after being turned away from the bodega a second time — when his mother, Leandra Feliz lost it.
“No, no, no!” she started screaming.
Her body began shaking, she was pounding her fists on the spectator bench, and it looked like she was about to faint.
Feliz was escorted out and an ambulance came, but she was not taken to the hospital.
The cross-examination will continue Friday.
