A 40-year-old Hicksville man was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison Wednesday after a Nassau County jury found he subjected a 32-year-old woman to months of armed threats, physical assault, and sexual violence, including a threat to kill her and bury her at an abandoned Brentwood psychiatric center. Judge Robert McDonald handed down the sentence in Mineola after Jayden Abadi Alvarado Velasquez was convicted in May on all nine counts, including predatory sexual assault, third-degree assault, attempted second-degree assault, aggravated harassment, and multiple weapons charges.
Nassau County District Attorney Anne T. Donnelly, who announced the sentence, said it ends Alvarado Velasquez's ability to continue violence against the victim. Prosecutors said the abuse began not long after Alvarado Velasquez met the woman at a neighborhood deli on August 26, 2023, according to Shore News Network. Assistant District Attorney Amber Kempermann told the court at sentencing that he showed up uninvited at her home the very next day, and from there controlled her life through threats, treating her, in her words, “like she was his property,” as reported by Newsday.
Threats at the Brentwood Grounds
The District Attorney's office said Alvarado Velasquez threatened at gunpoint, at her apartment on August 27, 2023, and the abuse escalated from there. Prosecutors said that on November 26, 2023, he drove her to his Hicksville home, where he sexually assaulted her at gunpoint, and also drove her to a psychiatric center in Brentwood — the site of the long-defunct Pilgrim State Psychiatric Center.
At that abandoned, graffiti-covered building, Kempermann told the court, Alvarado Velasquez claimed gang members met there to plot homicides, and he threatened to kill and bury both the woman and her daughter on the grounds. The District Attorney's office said he also threatened to kill her and bury her at the psychiatric center, and separately, prosecutors said, threatened to cut off her hand while at that location. He also claimed he had killed a former girlfriend and buried her on the property, prosecutors said. During an altercation in her vehicle that same day, prosecutors said he smashed her cellphone and physically assaulted her.
Why the Threats Carried Extra Terror
The site's history made those threats especially chilling. Pilgrim State's abandoned grounds have a documented history as an MS-13 burial ground, where federal authorities and police discovered the skeletal remains of multiple young murder victims in 2016, according to Newsday's earlier reporting. Hoodline previously reported on MS-13 murders tied to Brentwood, part of a string of federal cases connected to the same wooded property.
Three days after the November 26 assault, on November 29, 2023, the Nassau County Police Department's Criminal Intelligence Rapid Response Team arrested Alvarado Velasquez. Prosecutors said that around that time, he also sent the woman intimidating text messages, including a video showing two firearms. Detectives recovered a loaded handgun, magazine, and ammunition from his jacket, and police who searched his bedroom that day recovered another handgun, magazine, and ammunition. Police also recovered multiple New York State identification cards bearing his photograph but different names.
Gang Ties Disputed by the Defense
The case unfolded against a backdrop of intense regional focus on MS-13. In April 2026, just weeks before Alvarado Velasquez's trial began, law enforcement agencies conducted regional gang sweeps across Long Island, following an August 2025 crackdown in Nassau County that resulted in 42 gang-related arrests — a sweep Hoodline covered in a prior report on the crackdown.
But at sentencing, defense attorney Robert Schalk pushed back hard on the gang narrative prosecutors built around the case. He argued that no MS-13 affiliation was ever proven in court, framing the matter instead as a dispute within a consensual relationship rather than a gang-related prosecution, Newsday reported. That dispute over the gang framing does not appear to have been resolved in court; the jury's verdict addressed the underlying assault, harassment, and weapons counts rather than any gang affiliation charge.
Verdict, Sentence, and a Planned Appeal
The trial began April 22, 2026, and the Nassau County jury deliberated for less than four hours on May 6, 2026, before returning guilty verdicts on all nine counts, according to the Nassau County District Attorney's Office. Alvarado Velasquez was convicted of predatory sexual assault, third-degree assault, attempted second-degree assault, aggravated harassment, three counts of second-degree criminal possession of a weapon, and two counts of fourth-degree criminal possession of a weapon.
Predatory sexual assault is a Class A-II violent felony under New York Penal Law § 130.95, carrying a maximum statutory sentence of up to life imprisonment. The prosecution was led by Assistant District Attorneys Amber Kempermann and Gabriella Malfi of the Special Victims Bureau. Kempermann has worked alongside Samosa, a golden-Labrador retriever service dog the DA's office partnered with her in August 2025 to help support victims through traumatizing interviews and court proceedings, per prior Newsday reporting.
Defense counsel announced immediately following the May verdict that Alvarado Velasquez maintains his innocence on all counts and intends to file an appeal, according to Patch. That appeal remains pending even as Nassau County officials point to the 25-years-to-life sentence as a decisive end to the threats the victim endured.
-4.webp?w=160&h=400&fit=crop&crop=edges)
