A Bronx man found guilty of fatally shooting a neighbor in the back during a gunfight has been released early from prison thanks to an appeals court ruling that he could have opened fire in self defense.
Alfonso Skeeter was released from Eastern Correctional Facility in Ulster County last week after serving five years of his 20-year sentence for the fatal shooting of 21-year-old Ray Rosello.
Evidence at trial showed Rosello was part of a group that got into an argument outside of a deli at 180th St. and Daly Avenue on July 19, 2015. A second group, including Skeeter, eventually joined the fray. Skeeter and Rosello traded a total of around 20 rounds in what Bronx District Attorney Darcel Clark described as “a fusillade of bullets” in a release. Rosello was struck in the right thigh and upper back and died.
But on June 1 a mid-level state appeals court vacated the manslaughter charge against Skeeter, ruling prosecutors had not proven he shot first. In fact, evidence “strongly suggests” Rosello first pulled a gun, according to the ruling.
“We do not believe that the mere fact that the victim was shot in the back establishes that defendant was the initial aggressor, or that he did not reasonably believe that deadly physical force was still being used against him at the time he fired the fatal shot,” the court wrote. “Under the totality of the evidence, the fact that Rosello had his back turned to defendant at the moment when he was shot does not establish that he was withdrawing from the gunfight or running away.”
The court allowed Skeeter’s conviction for criminal possession of a weapon to stand.
Rosello’s mother, Yvonne Rodriguez, told Gothamist she’d been a “nervous wreck” since the ruling.
“What self defense?” Rodriguez, 50, said about the decision. “My son was shot through the back.”
She recalled holding her mortally wounded son outside her apartment building near the scene of the shooting.
“I relive every bit of it every day,”…
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