TRENTON – Brothers aged 13, 11 and 9 held back tears in court this morning as they faced the man who choked their mother to death and tossed her naked body in a dumpster in May of 2011.
David Lopez
It occurred at the sentencing of David Lopez, 29, an illegal alien from Guatemala who was sent to prison for up to 22 years for the slaying of Gladiz Polanco-Ramos, 35.
Mercer County Superior Court Judge Mark Fleming sentenced Lopez under the terms of a plea deal worked out between the Public Defenders Office and Assistant Mercer Prosecutor Stephanie Katz.
The sentencing came after the victim’s brother, Martin Polanco, told the judge Lopez landed in a loving household after he took up Gladiz and her three sons from a previous relationship.
“It still affects me,’’ the brother said. “I lived with my sister and her three children, and with him, and we never did anything to him. And the three children loved him and followed him around where ever he went.’’
Lopez, in shackles and an orange jail jumpsuit, apologized to the family and said he wasn’t in is “five right senses’’ that night because he’d been doing cocaine and drinking alcohol.
The case broke when one citizen peeked out a window and saw a naked body in a dumpster in Freudenmacher Alley between Roebling Avenue and Hudson Street at 2 in the morning. Soon officers were checking out 12 Roebling Avenue, where neighbors said Polanco lived with her boys, a new boyfriend and some other men.
One neighbor told The Trentonian at the time that Polanco’s ex couldn’t accept her taking up with the new man Lopez. The father was in court with the boys for the sentencing, however.