Prosecutors relied on surveillance, vehicle movements and co-defendant cases to show how Linver Ortiz Ponce was killed.
RIVERHEAD, N.Y. — Prosecutors built the murder case against Kayla Alvarenga around a late-night parking confrontation, a stolen BMW, gas station video and the abandoned red Camaro of the man later shot in a church parking lot.
A Suffolk County jury convicted Alvarenga, 23, in March of first-degree murder and related charges in the death of Linver Ortiz Ponce, 29. On Tuesday, Acting Supreme Court Justice Anthony S. Senft Jr. sentenced her to life in prison without parole. District Attorney Raymond A. Tierney said Alvarenga orchestrated the kidnapping and murder, directed others to hunt Ortiz Ponce down, and used minors to help carry out the crime.
The case began with a physical location and a vehicle. Ortiz Ponce parked his red Chevrolet Camaro in front of Alvarenga’s home on Fifth Avenue in Bay Shore shortly before midnight on Sept. 17, 2022. Prosecutors said Alvarenga confronted him and ordered him to move. When he did not, she called Christopher Perdomo, 28, and several teenagers, telling them to come to the house and remove Ortiz Ponce from the front of her home.
The BMW that arrived at the house became one of the first pieces of the prosecution timeline. Authorities said it had been stolen only hours earlier after a carjacking of a young woman in Bay Shore. The group used that vehicle to get to Alvarenga’s block, then beat Ortiz Ponce and took his Camaro. That sequence supported the charges that went beyond murder, including kidnapping, robbery and conspiracy. Prosecutors said the attack showed planning after the initial argument.
Ortiz Ponce’s escape created another set of evidence. After being dragged from his car and beaten, he ran from the scene and tried to hide at a gas station. Prosecutors said Alvarenga and some members of the group got into the stolen Camaro while others used the stolen BMW to look for him. When Alvarenga spotted him, she directed the others toward him. The district attorney’s office said surveillance video captured the moment Ortiz Ponce was abducted at gunpoint and pulled into the BMW.
That video helped prosecutors present the case as a continued course of conduct instead of separate bursts of violence. The evidence showed the group did not stop after Ortiz Ponce fled, prosecutors said. Instead, Alvarenga ordered the others to find, abduct and kill him. The gas station footage placed the victim alive and under force after the first assault. It also placed the stolen BMW at the center of the abduction that led to the church lot.
The next evidence point was the route to the House of Prayer Church of God. Prosecutors said Alvarenga directed the BMW to follow her to the church. During the ride, Perdomo beat Ortiz Ponce with a gun. At the parking lot, prosecutors said, the group continued the beating. Alvarenga then ordered Perdomo to kill Ortiz Ponce. As the victim tried to crawl away, Perdomo shot him repeatedly. The vehicles left the church lot afterward, according to the prosecution account.
The Camaro’s recovery in Smithtown linked the end of the night back to its start. Investigators found the vehicle abandoned in a wooded area about 15 miles northeast of Bay Shore. The car was not just a stolen item in the case. It was the vehicle Ortiz Ponce had parked in front of Alvarenga’s home, the object of the original dispute and one of the cars used by the group after the first assault. Prosecutors said that chain helped prove robbery and intent.
Co-defendant cases added to the final record. Perdomo was arrested in Georgia in May 2024 and later pleaded guilty to murder, kidnapping, robbery and criminal possession of a weapon. He was sentenced to 20 years to life in prison. The teenage defendants, who were 16 and 17 when Ortiz Ponce was killed, pleaded guilty and were sentenced in separate proceedings. Prosecutors said those outcomes left Alvarenga’s trial to answer the central question of who directed the killing.
The jury’s verdict answered that question in the prosecution’s favor. Alvarenga was convicted of murder in the first degree, kidnapping, robbery and conspiracy. Tierney said the jurors saw what she did and that the sentence meant she would spend the rest of her life in prison. Public accounts do not describe Alvarenga as the shooter. Prosecutors instead said her criminal liability came from the orders she gave, the search she led and the final command to kill Ortiz Ponce.
The sentence closed the trial-level case against Alvarenga more than three years after the killing. The record now includes the gas station video, the stolen vehicles, the abandoned Camaro, the guilty pleas of the other participants and the jury verdict against the woman prosecutors called the organizer. Any remaining court activity would be separate from the sentence itself and would depend on filings made after conviction.
Author note: Last updated May 21, 2026.