A Melville woman criticized a Suffolk judge Monday for offering a plea deal three years below the maximum sentence to the teenager who murdered her son in 2021.
Erica Rimmer, mother of shooting victim Luis Cameron Rimmer-Hernandez, said Acting State Supreme Court Justice Karen Kerr should not have gone forward with the sentencing of 16-year-old Ramon Lyons after social media videos emerged showing Lyons boasting about the killing from a juvenile detention center.
Lyons, who wast 14 years old when he shot Rimmer-Hernandez, 21, six times in his chest and arm, will serve 12 years to life under the sentence agreed to on Oct. 19 and handed down in Central Islip Monday.
“How was this plea deal even considered or granted when Ramon Lyons protects other people involved in my son’s murder and shows no remorse?” Rimmer asked the judge as she spoke at the sentencing. “Ramon even bragged about this, posting raps to the public on Instagram while taunting my family by stating, ‘I show no remorse. It is what it is.’”
Kerr told Rimmer and more than two dozen family and friends who packed one side of the courtroom, many sporting shirts with the victim’s likeness and the words “Long Live Cam” on the front and “No Justice No Peace, Vote Republican” on the back, that she was unaware Lyons was posting to social media at the time she offered the plea. Kerr said she learned of the videos through a presentence investigation report prepared by the Suffolk County Probation Department in the weeks since.
“The self-centeredness and insensitivity that you have shown in these posts is not only despicable, but alarming and really drives home the fact that you continue to fail to appreciate the consequences of your actions,” Kerr told Lyons.
Defense attorney Matthew Tuohy of Huntington said his client has accepted responsibility and has said he’s sorry even if he hasn’t done so in “an optimal way.”
Rimmer also expressed concern over the way the case was handled by lead prosecutor Frank Schroeder,…
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