Newark Schoolyard defendant sentenced

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NEWARK, N.J., Jan. 9 (UPI) -- The final defendant charged in a 2007 New Jersey execution-style slaying of three people was sentenced to 195 years behind bars.

Gerardo Gomez, 15 on the night of the shootings, was the youngest and last defendant of the Newark Schoolyard slayings, and was sentenced Wednesday to 60 years each for the murders of Iofemi Hightower, Dashon Harvey, and Terrence Aeriel, and 15 years for the attempted murder of Natasha Aerial, all students or incoming students of Delaware State University, The (Newark) Star- Ledger reported.

Gomez is the youngest of the six people charged. The others either pleaded guilty or were convicted by a jury, and are all in prison, the newspaper said.

Prosecutors described the attackers as members of a notorious and violent street gang who surrounded their victims at gunpoint, led them down a set of stairs in a schoolyard and made them kneel, facing a wall, while being shot.