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Thread: Alyssa Marie Torres Sentenced to 3 Life Terms in 2019 FL Slaying of Felix Rivera and Amarilyss Martinez

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    Alyssa Marie Torres Sentenced to 3 Life Terms in 2019 FL Slaying of Felix Rivera and Amarilyss Martinez


    Felix Rivera and Amarilyss Martinez




    June 24, 2019

    Florida mother charged with killing daughter, stepdad

    By Gary Detman
    CBS12 News

    PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. (CBS12) - A mother accused of killing her own daughter and stepfather is now in custody in Port St. Lucie.

    Investigators arrested 29-year-old Alyssa Marie Torres around 10:30 a.m. in Fort Pierce. Torres is facing two counts of murder and aggravated battery with a deadly weapon.

    Police said Torres killed her 8-year-old daughter, identified by family members as Amarilyss Martinez, and her stepdad, identified by police as 55-year-old Felix Rivera. Torres also wounded her mother, 53-year-old Marisol
    Rivera, in a shooting just after midnight at the Waterleaf Townhomes apartment complex off SE Hillmoor Drive.

    Amarilyss was a second grade student in the St. Lucie Public Schools district.

    "St Lucie Public Schools is saddened to hear about the tragic and unfortunate passing of our student, Amarilyss Martinez," officials from the school district said. "Such times are difficult for all of us; however, we will support one during this time of grief."

    "That was my little sister, I lost my sister, an innocent child that didn't deserve this," sobbed the girl's half-sister during an interview with CBS12 News reporter Denise Sawyer.

    Police say after the killings, the little girl's mother took off.

    During the search for Torres, authorities labeled her "armed and dangerous."

    Authorities issued an alert for Torres and her car, a Toyota Rav4. Police said she frequently visited Palm Beach and Orlando.

    But officers captured her about 10 hours later in Fort Pierce.

    Investigators do not have a motive for the shootings. The suspect's mother is in the hospital with non life-threatening injuries, police said.

    Police say it appears Torres acted alone and there are no suspects at large.

    A Ruger 300 LCP was recovered from Torres' vehicle and is being placed into evidence, according to police. Torres' mother was the one who identified her as the shooter.

    Torres was booked into the St. Lucie County Jail around 4:46 p.m.

    https://cbs12.com/news/local/2-kille...e-woman-wanted
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

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    Prosecutors ask for death penalty in double murder

    By WPBF News

    TORRES TOLD POLICE DURING AN INTERVIEW SHE SHOT HER STEP FATHER IN THE HEAD, TRIED TO SHOOT HER MOTHER, BUT THE MOTHER FOUGHT BACK, RAN INTO THE MASTER BEDROOM, AND LOCKED THE DOOR.

    TORRES SAYS SHE THEN ENTERED THE GUESTS BEDROOM AND SHOT HER 8-YEAR-OLD DAUGHTER IN THE HEAD.

    TORRES IS FACING MURDER AND ATTEMPTED MURDER CHARGES. PROSECUTORS IN COURT FRIDAY ISSUED A NOTICE OF INTENT TO SEEK THE DEATH PENALTY.

    SOME OF THE VICTIM FAMILY MEMBERS WERE IN COURT TODAY. THEY DID NOT WANT TO COMMENT.

    THE NEXT COURT DATE IS SET FOR MAY.

    https://www.wpbf.com/article/prosecu...urder/30936737
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

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    Port St. Lucie woman accused of killing 8-year-old daughter, stepfather faces death penalty if convicted

    A 28-year-old woman accused of fatally shooting her 8-year-old daughter and stepfather was apprehended Monday, police say Treasure Coast Newspapers

    When Alyssa Marie Torres goes on trial for capital murder in the 2019 shooting deaths of her 8-year-old daughter and her stepfather at his Port St. Lucie home, she could be the 1st woman from the Treasure Coast sentenced to death, state records show.

    Torres, 30, is accused of using a .380-caliber handgun to shoot her 54-year-old stepfather, Felix Rivera, and her daughter Amarilyss Jianni Martinez, 8; both were found shot in the head at close range.

    Police said Torres also pistol-whipped and choked her mother, Marisol Rivera, during a brutal attack June 24, 2019 around 12:30 a.m. at the Waterleaf Townhomes and Apartments on Southeast Hillmoor Drive in Port St. Lucie. The apartments are east of U.S. 1, not far from St. Lucie Medical Center.

    Police found Marisol Rivera at the entry of a stairwell “in a panicked state” with injuries to her face and head, but not by gunfire.

    She told officers Torres left in a 2005 Toyota RAV4, which authorities found several hours later at a residential address in the 7300 block of Indian River Drive, about an 8-mile drive from the Rivera home. Torres has been in custody since her arrest.

    In December, a grand jury voted to indict Torres on 2 counts of 1st-degree murder with a firearm and a count of attempted 1st-degree murder with a firearm. Prosecutors later filed an intent to seek the death penalty if Torres is convicted.

    Her lead attorney, Assistant Public Defender Stanley Glenn, who joined the case in May, declined to discuss Torres’ defense. She’s pleaded not guilty.

    The only other woman indicted for capital murder on the Treasure Coast was in 1999, when a jury decided Connie Pfeiffer should serve life in prison for her role in hiring a hitman — death row inmate Paul Evans — to kill her estranged husband in an insurance scam.

    Of the 17 women sentenced to death in Florida, records show three currently live on Florida's death row and 2 have been executed, including serial killer Aileen Wuornos in 2002. The other women had their sentences commuted or overturned, according to the state Department of Corrections.

    Terrifying attack

    While being treated at Lawnwood Regional Medical Center and Heart Institute, Marisol Rivera told detectives she and her husband were sleeping in bed when she woke to a loud “pop” sound, according to interview transcripts.

    “I didn't even hear her (Torres) come into the room … I hear something at the foot of my bed and it was my daughter,” Rivera recalled. “She was trying to reload or maybe the gun got jammed, I don't know what it was.

    “I started wrestling with her with the gun and she — she was strong, she was fighting me and I was fighting her right back and she kept hitting me with the gun like trying to knock me out with the gun.”

    They fought into the hallway, Rivera said; Torres tried to choke her.

    “I was like, ‘What are you doing? How can you do this to your mother, to your parents, what's going on?" Rivera said. “She's like, ‘You’re not my parents, you’re not my mother’ … and I just kept fighting her and screaming.”

    Rivera grabbed her phone, ran to a bedroom and screamed out a window for help as she dialed 911.

    “I'm yelling for help, I'm like ‘Please help me, my daughter just killed my husband,’ and all of a sudden I hear the baby screaming and I hear a shot,” Rivera said. “So, when I'm yelling out, that's when she runs out and she gets in her car and takes off.”

    Neighbor describes fatal shootings: 'You could tell there was fear in the scream'

    Looking in her granddaughter’s bedroom, Rivera sees that, with her husband also shot, Torres “got them point-blank, both of them in their head.”

    “2 beautiful lives are gone,” she said.

    Police found Amarilyss, known as “Peanut,” lying on a carpeted floor.

    After her arrest, Torres told police she took Felix Rivera’s handgun the night of the incident and hid it in her room. She then waited for him, her daughter and her mother to go to sleep and then used the weapon to shoot them.

    “Thus far, she has admitted to shooting her family,” Port St. Lucie Assistant Police Chief William Vega said at a news conference.

    Ultimate punishment

    Because of the coronavirus pandemic, it could be months before jury trials start again and Torres’ trial likely won’t be ready for a year or longer.

    If she's found guilty of 1st-degree murder during the 1st part of her trial, the same jury that convicted her would then determine her sentence, which can only be life in prison or execution.

    State Attorney Bruce Colton, who retires in December after a 35-year career, said Torres’ gender had no bearing in his office’s decision to seek the death penalty in her case.

    “I don’t believe that came up at all — that we’ve hardly ever gone after a woman, or that we’ve hardly ever had a woman that’s death-penalty qualified,” Colton said. “I agree, it’s very rare for us to seek the death penalty on a female. In the majority of cases, we don’t seek the death penalty whether it’s a male or a female.”

    In determining whether capital punishment is warranted, the law requires the state to identify the aggravating circumstances, or reasons why a sentence of death is legal and appropriate. Prosecutors weigh such aggravators against any possible mitigating evidence, such as diminished mental health, substance abuse or neurological troubles.

    The state expects Torres’ defense to develop mitigating evidence on her behalf and Colton said if it’s compelling enough, prosecutors may re-evaluate the death penalty.

    To vote in favor of execution, Torres’ jury must agree unanimously in finding the state proved beyond a reasonable doubt at least one of four statutory aggravators:

    • The victim of the capital felony was a person less than 12 years of age.
    • The defendant was previously convicted of another capital felony or of a felony involving the use or threat of violence to the person.
    • The capital felony was a homicide and was committed in a cold, calculated and premeditated manner without any pretense of moral or legal justification.
    • The capital felony was especially heinous, atrocious or cruel.

    According to Florida’s death penalty jury instructions, “heinous” means extremely wicked or shockingly evil; “atrocious” means outrageously wicked and vile; and “cruel” means designed to inflict a high degree of pain with utter indifference to, or even enjoyment of, the suffering of others.

    Additionally, the kind of homicide intended to be included as an aggravator is one accompanied by additional acts showing “the crime was conscienceless or pitiless and was unnecessarily torturous” to the victim.

    Colton insisted that Torres’ relationship to her daughter heightened the torture the child suffered.

    “This case was especially heart wrenching because the young child was a victim, this was the mother of the child,” Colton said. “The child had some idea what was going on in the house and was in great fear.”

    Violating that trust of a child, by someone they looked to for safety, Colton said, “does lend to the fear and the horror that the child went through.

    “Seeing the mother … walking into the room where they were cowering on the floor, pointing a gun at them and killing them,” he said. “That’s the tortuous part, and it makes it even worse that it was a relative. A mother or father.”

    (source: tcpalm.com)
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

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    Alyssa Torres: Port St. Lucie woman sentenced to 3 life sentences for killing daughter, stepfather, injuring mother

    'I don't hate my daughter Alyssa. I still love her and miss her dearly,' mother says

    By Meghan McRoberts
    WPTV News

    FORT PIERCE, Fla. — A Port St. Lucie mother accused of shooting and killing her 8-year-old daughter and her stepfather, and trying to kill her mother, will spend the rest of her life in prison.

    Alyssa Torres, 30, was in court Friday and changed her not-guilty plea to a plea of no contest.

    The state was planning to pursue the death penalty for Torres if the case went to trial. Torres agreed to change her plea and accept a sentence of three life terms in prison without going to trial.

    During the summer of 2019, Torres was arrested after police said she killed her stepfather, Felix Rivera, while he was sleeping in his bed.

    Torres' mother, Marisol Rivera, woke up and raced to get away from Torres. Torres is accused of attacking her mother, but Marisol was able to escape.

    Then, investigators said, Torres searched for her daughter, Amarilyss Martinez, who was hiding in the guest room. Torres is accused of shooting her in the head, killing her.

    Marisol Rivera spoke to the judge Friday during the sentencing.

    "I don't hate my daughter Alyssa," Marisol Rivera said. "I still love her and miss her dearly."

    She said that her daughter's mental health had been a concern.

    "Every time we tried to get her help, we were blocked by the system that was supposed to get her help," Marisol Rivera said. "Because she was an adult, they were more concerned with not violating her rights. What about our rights, your honor? We have the right to be safe in our home."

    Marisol Rivera spoke lovingly about her granddaughter, nicknamed "Peanut."

    "She loved her makeup, her dresses, gymnastics and just watching YouTube," Marisol Rivera said. "I kept thinking about how she will no longer have any more first days of school, no more birthdays, no more Christmas, and I won't see her fall in love and get married."

    She also talked about the void left behind in her life by the death of her husband.

    "I will forever miss my true love, my soulmate," she said.

    Marisol Rivera also explained her hopes for her daughter's new future.

    "The only thing I wish for her is that she stays safe and gets the help she needs," she said.

    https://www.wptv.com/news/region-st-...njuring-mother
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

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