A Yonkers teenager faced no immediate threat when he pulled a switchblade from his pocket and fatally stabbed a pair of 16-year-olds at a pizzeria on Lake Avenue early last year, a prosecutor told jurors at the start of the teen's murder trial.
But Yorky Tineo's lawyer countered that the stabbings were in self-defense because he knew the teenagers were part of a large group looking for him that night. He feared they wanted to finish what was started seven months earlier when he was stabbed in a street fight.
"A tragedy does not mean it's murder," defense lawyer Thomas Montella said Monday, Sept. 14, in his opening statement in Westchester County Court. "Starting it doesn't make you the aggressor."
Tineo, 19, is facing charges of second-degree murder
in the deaths of Jayron Rivera and Tyler King-Mallanson.
Both sides agreed that the bad blood between Tineo, known as 'Nino', and Rivera began on June 22, 2024, when Tineo was stabbed. But while Montello suggested that the seeds of fear planted then in Tineo led to his actions months later, Assistant District Attorney James Bavero told jurors they weren't being asked to decide what happened that day - only what transpired in the double fatal stabbing Feb. 6, 2025.
On that night, Tineo and a friend were at Mickey's Pizzeria on Lake Avenue when Rivera and a group of his friends showed up. No verbal threats were exchanged before Tineo plunged his switchblade four inches into Rivera's chest and then ran from the pizzeria. Just outside, King-Mallanson - who had never met Tineo - was recording what had happened and after Tineo exited he stabbed King-Mallanson in the abdomen and the collarbone before fleeing.
As both 16-year-olds lay dying where they fell, some of Rivera's friends unsuccessfully chased after Tineo before flagging down a police car, while others beat Tineo's friend in the pizzeria with chairs and crutches.
Tineo was identified as a suspect almost immediately and his parents surrendered him to detectives a day after the stabbings.
Police used video surveillance showing Tineo's flight from the pizzeria up Voss Avenue to find the switchblade behind a Dumpster on the grounds of Sacred Heart High School two blocks away.
Bavero said Tineo "intentionally, maliciously and unjustifiably" killed the two teenagers. He said video showed Rivera with his hands empty and at his side when Tineo attacked and that King-Mallanson only had his cell phone in his hand when Tineo rushed at him.
"They posed no threat to him at the moment he used deadly physical force against them," he said.
Montella said Tineo did not have the luxury of watching the video multiple times like the jury surely will in the coming weeks.
"The prosecution wants you to believe it was Yorky with the violent intent," Montella told the jury, adding that his client had only seconds to decide how to protect himself. "With all that context swirling around in his head ... He had to act. He had to survive."
Rivera's mother, Zaymara Gonzalez, was the first prosecution witness, describing to Assistant District Attorney Lana Hochheiser how scared her son was when he returned to their Orchard Street home on June 22, 2024, his face bleeding and bruised. She got him a ticket to Nebraska where his father lived and Rivera stayed there until returning on Feb. 1, 2025, five days before he was killed.
Gonzalez said that her son told her he was jumped by five or six people. She said she learned that someone had been stabbed but didn't know it was Tineo. She told defense lawyer Katie Wasserman on cross examination that she was unaware there was an accusation that her son had stabbed Tineo during the fight.
Wasserman asked her if she sent her son to Nebraska because she feared he'd be arrested. Gonzalez said she sent him for his safety.
Tineo faces up to 25 years to life in prison on each murder charge if convicted. He is also charged with tampering with physical evidence, a felony, and fourth-degree criminal possession of a weapon, a misdemeanor.
This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: 19-year-old goes on trial in fatal stabbings of two teens at Yonkers pizzeria
