How a 15-Year-Old Ended Up Stabbed to Death Outside a Bronx Bodega

NEW YORK — The vicious killing of a 15-year-old boy at the hands of men wielding knives and machetes outside of a Bronx bodega shook New Yorkers this summer like few other crimes in recent memory. Crude footage showing the killing of Lesandro Guzman-Feliz, who was called Junior, went viral.

The stabbing provided a stark example of the gang violence that continues in some pockets of New York City even as murder rates have fallen across the metropolis to lows not seen since the 1950s.

Police believe Junior’s killing was one in a string of violent attacks stemming from a feud between rival sets in a Dominican gang called the Trinitarios. The killing was one of the few to be captured so explicitly on video, and it drew outrage and fueled speculation about why and how the teenager was targeted.

To understand what happened that night, The New York Times retrieved and analyzed hours of video from surveillance cameras and cellphones to retrace Junior’s last steps. Reporters interviewed more than a dozen witnesses, friends, relatives and law enforcement officials, and pored over court documents to reconstruct the night Junior died.

On June 20, a security camera shows Junior leaving his home in the Bronx at 10:05 p.m. to meet a friend about two blocks away. Wearing white socks and black sandals, he glances at his phone.

At 11:32 p.m., cameras capture Junior on his way to Adams Place, a popular hangout spot among teenagers. The Times obtained surveillance footage that shows four cars driving down Adams Place at around that same time. Witnesses said the men inside the cars had covered their faces and were taunting passers-by.

One by one, the cars turn the corner. And that is when, police say, the Trinitarios spot Junior and begin to chase him, mistaking him for a member of a rival crew. The men surround Junior inside a bodega two blocks from his home, drag him out to the sidewalk and stab him repeatedly before running away into the night.

It is still unclear why Junior’s assailants might have mistaken him for a gang member. Police and several of Junior’s closest friends said he was not part of a gang, but friends acknowledged he had acquaintances who were.

Junior told a friend the night before he died he had seen another youth stabbed by Trinitarios cruising Adams Place and they seemed to take him for a gang member.

The Trinitarios are a highly organized New York-based gang founded in the early 1990s by two Dominican men jailed on Rikers Island for protection against other gangs. The group was named for three revolutionaries of the Dominican Republic and it adopted that country’s motto — “Dios, patria, y libertad,” which means “God, homeland and liberty.”

Today, the gang has expanded into drug dealing and has a presence in upper Manhattan, the Bronx, Queens and Long Island. A violent feud within the gang has intensified in recent months: At least 10 other people were maimed in June in tit-for-tat attacks among warring Trinitario factions in the Bronx. Their weapon of choice is the machete.

In July, 12 men who prosecutors say are part of the Trinitarios were charged in connection with Junior’s killing. A 13th man, also considered to be a gang member, was arrested last month and police have said they are searching for another. All of those arrested have pleaded not guilty.

Junior’s face has been memorialized in several murals in his Bronx neighborhood. His neighbors grieved at impromptu vigils and a funeral that drew hundreds of mourners.

Neighbors boycotted the bodega where Junior was stabbed and forced it to close, complaining that the owner had not done enough to shield the boy from the machete-wielding gang. The owner denied the allegations in a tearful television interview, but ultimately sold the bodega, which recently opened under new ownership.