The Trinitarios gang member who delivered the fatal stab wound to 15-year-old Lesandro “Junior” Guzman Feliz has died in state prison custody, less than a month after he was re-sentenced for the Bronx teen’s shocking murder.
Jonaiki Martinez Estrella, 31, is listed as “deceased” as of Friday on the state Corrections and Community Supervision Department’s online inmate locator. He was being housed in the maximum-security Coxsackie Correctional Facility.
Prison staff found him lifeless in his cell at about 1:15 p.m. Friday, according to Corrections spokeswoman Nicole Whitaker. Staff performed CPR and tried to revive him with Narcan, which is used to stop an opioid overdose, and a defibrillator, until an ambulance arrived, she said. He was pronounced dead at a local hospital.
“I’m in shock,” Junior’s mother, Leandra Feliz, told the Daily News Sunday after learning of her son’s killer’s death. “It brings me some kind of peace. My son deserves justice.”
Martinez Estrella’s cause of death remains under investigation, Whitaker said. And the Attorney General’s Office of Special Investigation said it is conducting a preliminary assessment of his death.
But his decision to join a gang sealed his fate, Junior’s mother believes.
“They only have choices to go in jail or to go into the cemetery,” she said. “That was his decision when he was free and he could decide for his life. He picked to be a gang member.”
Junior’s caught-on-video June 20, 2018 killing horrified and outraged the city.
Martinez Estrella was part of a group of gang members who mistook Junior for a member of a rival Trinitarios set and chased him into Cruz and Chiky Grocery on E. 183rd St. near Bathgate Ave. in Belmont. They dragged him out to the street and butchered him with knives and a machete.
Martinez Estrella plunged a large knife into Junior’s throat, severing his jugular vein.
He was initially convicted of first-degree murder and faced life without parole but an appeals court tossed that charge in March 2023, ruling that “the evidence did not establish the very specific elements of that crime,” namely that he intended to inflict torture on Junior before his death.
Martinez Estrella remained convicted of second-degree murder, conspiracy and gang assault. On May 30, a Bronx Criminal Court judge re-sentenced him to 25 years to life.
The state police and Correction and Community Supervision’s Office of Special Investigations probes any in-custody death that isn’t the result of natural causes, Whittaker said.
Originally Published: June 29, 2025 at 2:14 PM EDT
