The mother of a 15-year-old boy brutally murdered in the street said neither New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio or Police Commissioner James O’Neill had reached out to the family with a phone call in the days following the murder.
“I have not heard from them. No, no one in their offices contact me,” Lesandro Guzman-Feliz’s mother, Leandra Feliz, told the New York Post on Sunday.
Instead of calling Leandra Feliz, de Blasio spent the day posing for photo ops at the city’s Gay Pride Parade and holding press conferences.
A spokeswoman for de Blasio did not give a specific timeline on when the mayor would call the victim’s mother, but NYPD officials said O’Neill would pay his respects at Guzman-Feliz’s wake on Monday.
Members of the deadly Trinitarios gang dragged Guzman-Feliz, 15, out of a Bronx bodega on Wednesday night and allegedly butchered him to death with a machete, mistaking the innocent teen for someone else.
When the gang leader realized the wrong person was killed, he sent a message to Guzman-Feliz’s relatives saying he was “sorry.”
Police arrested five men in connection with the slaying, apprehending three of the suspects in Paterson, New Jersey, and two more in the Bronx Sunday evening.
NYPD officials identified one of the suspects—Kevin J. Alvarez, 19—and charged him with second-degree murder, manslaughter, assault, and gang assault.