Press Release

Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz announced today that Marco Ortiz, 48, has been sentenced to 19 years in prison after pleading guilty last month to manslaughter in the first degree. The defendant stabbed to death his daughter’s husband in January 2019 in the Briarwood, Queens, home they all shared.

District Attorney Katz said, “This was a senseless killing that began as a family dispute and erupted into bloodshed. A woman has lost her husband – the father of her children. And now, her father has been sentenced to prison time for this horrific crime.”

Ortiz of 139^th Street in Briarwood, Queens, last month pleaded guilty to manslaughter in the first degree before Queens Supreme Court Justice Kenneth C. Holder. The jury that sat through two weeks of testimony was deliberating when the defendant decided to plead guilty. Today, Justice Holder sentenced Ortiz to 19 years in prison, to be followed by 5 years’ post release supervision.

District Attorney Katz said that, according to the trial testimony, around 8 p.m. on January 24, 2019, the defendant argued with his son-in-law Travis Ford. Ortiz’ daughter was not home because she was in the hospital after delivering the couple’s second child. The verbal altercation between the two men intensified to a point that the defendant slashed the 31-year-old victim with a knife in the face and stabbed him once in the abdomen. The victim was rushed to a nearby hospital but he could not be saved.

Senior Assistant District Attorney Courtney Finnerty, of the District Attorney’s Homicide Bureau, prosecuted the case, with the assistance of Assistant District Attorney Erin Mullins, under the supervision of Assistant District Attorneys Peter McCormack III and John W. Kosinski, Senior Deputy Chiefs, Karen Ross, Deputy Chief and under the overall supervision of Executive Assistant District Attorney for Major Crimes Daniel A. Saunders.