An ex-con accused of beating his girlfriend to death in her apartment was sentenced to 20 years in prison, Bronx prosecutors said.
Bronx Criminal Court Judge Audrey Stone on Wednesday ordered that Jeremy Cortorreal spend the next two decades behind bars for killing Lisette Gomez back on March 21, 2023.
Cortorreal, 35, pleaded guilty to manslaughter charges in March, prosecutors said.
“The defendant strangled his girlfriend, and he has now been held accountable with a substantial prison sentence,” Bronx District Attorney Darcel Clark said Friday.
Gomez, 38, was found lifeless, lying in bed under the covers. She had been beaten about the face and neck and strangled, cops said at the time.
Distraught family members immediately pointed the finger at Cortorreal, her live-in boyfriend. The two had an “abusive relationship,” relatives told police.
“He’s a monster,” Gomez’s older sister Carmen Torres, 44, told the Daily News at the time of her death. “There were times [Lisette] calls me and says, ‘Come, come, he’s beating me.’ I used to call the cops, and he would go to the fire escape. … When I would come around, he would leave.”
“I was telling her, ‘He’s no good for you,’” she recalled.
ny
Former neighbor Nilsa Rodriguez said she personally saw signs of the abuse. “She walked with black eyes every day,” Rodriguez said.
Gomez and Cortorreal met at a liquor store six months before her death. Shortly after they met, Cortorreal moved into her apartment, relatives said.
“She didn’t deserve to die like this, she really didn’t,” Torres added. “Wonderful woman, lovely, big heart.”
Torres said she reported violence against her sister to the police that January. In the end, she said, nothing came of her report.
But, in the months before her death, Gomez’s two sons, ages 6 and 8, were removed from her household because of the situation, Torres said. Gomez also struggled with a drug problem, her sister added.
“She’s lovable. I miss her,” Torres said. “She’s my younger sister.”
Cortorreal was charged with murder, manslaughter and assault a day after Gomez’s body was discovered. When interviewed by police, he repeatedly changed his story, prosecutors said.
“His story changed about four times,” Assistant District Attorney Kanalya Arima said at the accused killer’s Bronx arraignment. “He confessed to putting his hand on her neck until she was unconscious. He chose not to call 911. He knew she was dead when he left.”
Video showed the couple arriving together at the apartment before Cortorreal left by himself, with prosecutors detailing how the 5-foot-9, 160-pound suspect callously packed a bag to flee — with Gomez’s corpse left lying on a nearby bed.
The defendant was discovered inside his mother’s apartment next door, officials said. Prosecutors said Cortorreal had jumped bail multiple times in the past.
Torres recalled how her slain sibling had been dating someone else before taking up with the new boyfriend — with Lisette’s life then falling to pieces over the course of a few spiraling months, according to her sister.
“All of a sudden she started turning into a crackhead,” Torres said. “She turned into a drug addict when he came into the picture, and now she’s dead.”
