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Evens Dumas, 21 (above, left), is currently serving a state prison sentence for a weapons conviction and faces trial in another gun case, creating a “three strikes” situation that triggers a harsher sentence, Assistant Bergen County Prosecutor Danielle Grootenboer told a judge during arraignments yesterday in Hackensack.
Arraigned with Dumas were co-defendants Blonson Florestal, 20 (above, middle), Keyshawn Malone, 22 (right), both also of Irvington.
Defense attorneys entered “not guilty” pleas for all three. A fourth defendant, 26-year-old Jose Rivas of West New York, wasn’t in court due to an undisclosed conflict.
All four are charged with three counts of murder in a sweeping grand jury indictment returned in Hackensack last month that includes 10 first-degree and 11 second-degree charges.
Rivas, an MS-13 gang member and ex-con from West New York, got wind of the game and contacted the three others — all reputed members of the Bloods gang subset Sex Money Murder, authorities said at the time.
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, they said.
After putting nearly a dozen people on the floor, they took $1,800 in cash, jewelry and other valuables.
Dumas, meanwhile, took Lopez, 50, 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 yesterday charges the quartet 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.
STORY / PHOTOS: Mary K. Miraglia, CLIFFVIEW PILOT Courthouse Reporter
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