Juan Delgado-Rodriguez will spend the rest of his life in prison for murdering Jean Ortiz-Rivera as he sat with his wife on their Lehman Street front porch on Lebanon’s north side.
A jury in November found 33-year-old Delgado-Rodriguez guilty of 1st-degree murder for fatally shooting Ortiz-Rivera twice in the neck on March 9, 2023. Lebanon County District Attorney Pier Hess Graf told the jury that Delgado-Rodriguez killed Ortiz-Rivera hours after an argument and physical altercation at 9th and Lehman streets between the defendant’s sister and the victim’s wife.
Delgado-Rodriguez did not testify at trial, but his public defender, Michael Light, argued to the jury that the shooter, who wore a hoodie and a surgical mask, was William Alex Ramos-Rivas, boyfriend of the defendant’s sister.
Police found the murder weapon, a 9mm handgun, in Ramos-Rivas’ possession 24 days after the crime. It had Ramos-Rivas’s DNA, but not the defendant’s. An expert witness for the prosecution testified that the gun had been possessed by both men over that time, and that repeated handling could have rubbed off the defendant’s DNA.
The shooter also had a visible leg tattoo that matched the defendant’s, according to the victim’s wife.
At sentencing on Wednesday morning, Tylwalk noted that a life sentence without possibility of parole was mandatory. He ordered that Delgado-Rodriguez be housed in a state correctional facility “for the rest of his natural life, and stand committed until that sentence is complied with.”
Before Tylwalk announced the sentence, Ortiz-Rivera’s widow, Roseann, spoke to her husband’s killer as he stood just feet away in the jury box, handcuffed and in an orange prison jumpsuit.
“What you did to my family, you not only took away my husband, you took him away from my kids,” she said, fighting back tears. “I’ll never be able to forgive you for what you’ve done to my family.”
Decrying the senselessness of gun violence, Hess Graf told the court that one man was dead and two families devastated by the defendant’s crime, simply because of “two women having a verbal argument in the street over nothing.”
Referring to Ortiz-Rivera’s widow, Hess Graf told the court that “a jury’s verdict doesn’t bring her husband back.”
Before imposing the sentence, Tylwalk asked Delgado-Rodriguez if he wished to say anything. He quietly replied, “No, your Honor,” and showed no reaction when the sentence was announced.
Delgado-Rodriguez has been incarcerated in the Lebanon County Correctional Facility since his arrest. He will initially be transferred to the the State Correctional Facility at Camp Hill, the statewide diagnostic and classification center for all males entering the prison system. He will be permanently assigned to a state prison from there.
Read More:
- 30-year-old Lebanon man fatally shot in city; 31-year-old Lebanon man arrested
- Jury hears opening statements and testimony in trial for fatal shooting
- Jury finds Juan Delgado guilty of 1st-degree murder for 2023 city shooting
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