Bronx District Attorney Darcel D. Clark announced Friday, Feb. 7, that a Bronx man has been sentenced to 20 years in prison for beating and choking a 12-year-old girl during a gunpoint robbery in her building.

 

In the context of the case, Clark said, “The defendant followed the girl home and brutally attacked her at the front door of her family’s apartment. Despite her injuries, she fought back. Hopefully, this sentence will bring a measure of justice to this brave child.”

 

Clark said the defendant, Gabriel Narvaez, 46, formerly of East 164^th Street, was sentenced on Friday by Bronx Supreme Court Justice Jeanette Rodriguez-Morick to 20 years in prison each on first-degree robbery and first-degree burglary, and seven years in prison for second-degree assault, to run concurrently, plus five years post-release supervision. She said he was found guilty by a jury on Nov. 12, 2024.

 

According to court records, on March 9, 2020, at around 3.50 p.m. on East 139^th Street in the Mott Haven section of the borough, the defendant was outside the victim’s building when she came home from school. He followed her in, pulled out a gun, and pistol-whipped, punched, kicked, and choked her.

 

Prosecutors said as she struggled with Narvaez, he took her keys and cellphone. Neighbors interrupted the attack, and Narvaez ran out the front door. He left behind a surgical mask and the baseball hat he was wearing. The court heard that a DNA profile was extracted from those items which matched the defendant, and he was arrested on Nov. 19, 2020.

 

The victim was transported to the hospital with gashes to her head, bruises to her body, and internal bleeding.  Prosecutors said that after she was treated and released, she required follow-up treatment, including psychiatric counseling.

 

The case was prosecuted by Senior Homicide Counsel Antonio Castro and Assistant District Attorney Tara Guarino of Trial Bureau 30, under the supervision of Burim Namani, deputy chief of the homicide bureau, Christine Scaccia, chief of the homicide bureau, and under the overall supervision of James Brennan, deputy chief of the trial division, and Theresa Gottlieb, chief of the trial division.

 

Clark thanked BXDA Senior Investigators John Might and Modesto Acevedo, Stalin Crespo, a video technician with the BXDA video unit, Nana Lamouse-Welch, a DNA specialist with the forensic science unit and Emelis Santana, crime victims bureau advocate, for their work on the case.