John Jefferson
Left: A still photo from surveillance video shows an armed robbery of a Lyft driver (Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office). Right: David Trent (Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office).
A member of the so-called “No Fake Love” or “NFL” gang in New York will spend decades in prison for a spate of violence that left a man dead and wounded two in a nightclub parking lot and terrorized a Lyft driver robbed at gunpoint months later.
David Trent, 19, was sentenced to 28 years for the shooting that killed Jorge Mauricio Sevilla Barrera, 28, and the separate stickup involving the Lyft driver. Trent pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter and a host of other charges, including attempted murder, conspiracy, weapon possession, robbery and larceny, Suffolk County District Attorney Raymond A. Tierney announced in a press release.
“We are satisfied that this lengthy sentence will keep this violent offender off the streets of Suffolk County,” said Tierney in the press release. “This was a violent and brutal act and now this defendant will be held accountable for his indefensible actions.”
The murder happened on Dec. 5, 2021.
Trent and a group of his associates began arguing with Sevilla Barrera and his friends in the parking lot of a nightclub in Farmingville on Long Island. The argument turned physical. Trent went to the vehicle he arrived in, got a gun, and shot the victim, prosecutors said.
He and another person kicked Barrera while he was on the ground, and then Trent stood over the victim and shot him again, killing him. He and his group got into their vehicle and drove off as Trent leaned out the window and fired multiple shots, injuring two people, officials said.
Months later, on April 13, 2022, Trent and two others held up a Lyft driver. During the drive, one of Trent’s associates repeatedly struck the driver on the head and body. Trent and a second man then pointed guns at the driver’s head and said to each other and the driver several times, “Shoot him! Get out of the car,” prosecutors said.
One of the attackers then got out of the vehicle and pulled the driver out before the three carjacked the Lyft driver’s vehicle. They ripped out the car’s dashboard camera and threw it onto the road. The camera, recovered later by police, caught the entire incident, prosecutors said. Trent’s two codefendants in the robbery and carjacking later pleaded guilty, officials said.
Trent was among 18 people indicted in December 2022 in a crackdown on the gang targeted for shootings, armed robberies and the theft of seven French bulldogs.
One of the gang’s members admitted to an Oct. 9, 2022, shooting outside an ex-congressman’s Long Island home as he and his wife were out of town. The daughters of former Rep. Lee Zelding, R-N.Y., were doing homework in the kitchen when the gunfire erupted. The girls were not physically harmed, but the shooting wounded two teens outside. The shooting stemmed from gang rivalry, prosecutors said.
Tierney described the gang then, saying in a press conference, “They branded themselves as ‘everybody killers,’ which means they were willing to kill anybody and everybody who disrespected them or stood in their way.”
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