A Connecticut man was sentenced to 33 years in jail on Tuesday for the stray-bullet killing of a Puerto Rican Olympic athlete’s mom.
Jasper Greene, 23, of New Haven, was one in every of three males charged within the loss of life of Mabel Martinez Antongiorgi on April 9, 2022. The 56-year-old lady was stitching in her house in Waterbury, about 30 miles (48 kilometers) southwest of Hartford, when a bullet flew by means of a wall and hit her within the head.
Martinez Antongiorgi’s daughter, Yarimar Mercado Martinez, competed for the household’s native Puerto Rico in rifle capturing on the Olympics in 2016, 2021 and 2024. She was in Brazil for one more competitors when her mom was killed.
In keeping with court docket testimony, the deadly capturing stemmed from a dispute that one of many suspects, Franklin Robinson, had with a person who stated hey to his girlfriend. Robinson, Greene and one other man shot up a automobile parked on Martinez Antongiorgi’s avenue, considering the person was inside it. A bullet went into Martinez Antongiorgi’s house. One other bystander was wounded however survived.
A jury convicted Robinson of homicide and different fees in 2023 and he was later sentenced to 90 years in jail.
The third suspect, Levi Brock, has pleaded not responsible to a number of fees within the case, together with homicide, and awaits trial.
On the time of her mom’s loss of life, Mercado Martinez lamented in social media posts that she “couldn’t even say goodbye.”
“Why you? Why this way?” she wrote. “You were just sitting in your little house sewing, as you always did.”
Martinez Antongiorgi and her husband of over 30 years, John Luis Mercado, moved to Waterbury from Puerto Rico just a few years after the U.S. territory endured 2017’s devastating Hurricane Maria. On the time of her loss of life, that they had set a date to resume their marriage ceremony vows, their daughter wrote on the time.
