Tears flow at no-jail sentencing of Bronx dad in scooter death of 4-year-old son: ‘I want you to die very slow’
After dodging jail in the horrific death of his 4-year-old son aboard a stolen scooter, a Bronx dad couldn’t escape the wrath of the child’s weeping relatives.
Tears mingled with outrage as a distraught Mario Rosario Sr. pleaded guilty Thursday in a plea deal for the tragic death of his namesake child in a crash that happened when the father took the youngster for a final and fatal ride last summer.
“I want you to know that I hate you for killing my grandson, for allowing him to die a horrific death and for letting him die alone, at that,” grandmother Jennifer Adorno said at the heartrending sentencing. “It should have been you who died that day. ... I hope you never have a peaceful moment in your life.”
The defendant, who declined to speak during the emotionally charged hearing or afterward, was sentenced to five years of probation and 500 hours of community service as he “cried like a waterfall,” said his attorney.
But family members saw only crocodile tears from Rosario at the Bronx Criminal Court hearing.
“What do I get?” asked the boy’s mother, Najera Roberts, in her victim statement to the court. “A box of ashes? The fact that my son is a statistic now? Never going to see him again. Never hearing his voice.”
Roberts recounted how she was left to pore through old photos and videos of the little boy who was taken too soon on the day when his father was celebrating the Dominican Day Parade.
“And if [I] don’t do that, I forget my son’s voice,” she said. “I’m hurting, I’m hurting every day. I miss my baby, I miss talking to him. I want to kiss him, I want to hold him, I want to tuck my son in bed at night and I can’t do that.”
The sentencing came barely two months before what would have been little Mario’s fifth birthday.
The plea deal was negotiated with Bronx District Attorney Darcel Clark and Bronx Supreme Court Justice Linda Poust after the child’s tragic death last Aug. 14 in a collision between the scooter and a car making a U-turn near W. 193rd St. at 9:20 p.m., according to Rosario’s lawyer and cops.
The defendant placed an oversize adult helmet on his son, sat the boy on his lap and then took off southbound on Bailey Ave. before the deadly wreck sent the scooter onto the sidewalk, with both father and son hurled to the ground.
A shaky Rosario wept with his head down at the defense table as the boy’s grandmother ripped into his claim of an accidental death.
“It was a conscious decision that you made that day,” said Adorno. “I hope you live a very long life of pain and suffering. I used to want you to die quickly, but I want you to die very slow, living every day knowing it’s your fault that your only child is gone.”
Adorno, speaking with the Daily News before the hearing, recounted how she puts the urn with her grandson’s ashes on her bed with his toys each morning before turning the TV to cartoons and heading to work.
“That’s what he used to do,” she explained. “He used to sit on my bed and watch cartoons. So now I feel like when we leave, we don’t want to leave them alone.”
When the hearing ended, Rosario pulled his blue hooded sweatshirt down over his face and walked out a free man with his lawyer.
“It’s undeniable, indisputable that this father suffered tremendously, and no amount of jail or anything will substitute for that,” said defense attorney Ali Benchakroun. “He’s suffered and will continue to suffer with the loss of his beloved son. It’s a sad case with a tragic accident.”
The scooter, police said, had been stolen from a man at gunpoint in Queens and it remained unknown how Rosario came to be riding it that day.
Roberts, the boy’s mother, charged the dad had taken his son on a previous scooter ride in June 2021, that time without a helmet, and was stopped by police for driving on the sidewalk with the boy on his lap.
The Bronx district attorney’s office confirmed the incident, but couldn’t provide details about the penalty, if any, for Mario Sr.
“I feel like there was no justice at all,” the tiny victim’s grandfather Jason Adorno said after the sentencing hearing. “All the facts were there; he did the same thing. ... I don’t know what’s going on, we’re the victims here and he wins.
“He gets to walk for murder. He murdered my grandson.”
The DA defended the plea deal.
“The loss ... devastated the entire family,” Clark said in a statement. “Mr. Rosario ... will have to cope with this tragedy for the rest of his life. The outcome in the case was the result of carefully considering many factors, which include consulting the boy’s family throughout the process.”
