Jose Rivas, 26, already is serving a state prison sentence for escape out of Hudson County and couldn’t be brought to court last week with his three co-defendants.
One of them, Evana Dumas, 21, also has been in state prison since November on drug and weapons convictions and isn’t eligible for release for another two years.
Dumas, of Irvington, face 60 or more years in prison if convicted of the shooting death of 50-year-old Fairview card game operator Jeronimo Lopez during a holdup last spring because of other weapons crimes, a prosecutor said last week.
(l. to r.) Dumas, Florestal, Malone (STORY / FILE PHOTOS: CLIFFVIEW PILOT Courthouse Reporter Mary K. Miraglia)
Also charged with three counts of murder are Blonson Florestal, 20, and Keyshawn Malone, 22, both also of Irvington.
Rivas, an MS-13 gang member from West New York, spent nearly 18 months in state prison before being released in March 2008. He went back in May 2014.
Authorities said he got wind of the game and contacted the three others — all reputed members of the Bloods gang subset Sex Money Murder.
Rivas, Dumas and Malone left Florestal in the car as they pistol-whipped a man standing outside Lopez’s Walker Street apartment smoking a cigarette and shoved him inside, authorities said at the time.
After putting nearly a dozen people on the floor, they took $1,800 in cash, jewelry and other valuables.
Dumas, meanwhile, took Lopez into the kitchen and shot him in the stomach, Bergen County Prosecutor John L. Molinelli said at the time. Lopez later died in surgery at Hackensack University Medical Center.
Several Fairview officers and Bergen County prosecutor’s detectives worked the case, canvassing the neighborhood and assembling valuable information. Arrests were made soon after.
Besides three murder counts each, the indictment on which the defendants were arraigned charges them with:
• conspiring to commit armed burglary and conspiring to commit armed robbery;
• entering the residence and committing the robbery with a deadly weapon;
• assaulting Lopez and six other men during the theft;
• hindering arrest by concealing or destroying evidence, including guns and property stolen from the victims.
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