Yorky Tineo says he was sure the group that entered Mickey's Pizzeria in Yonkers the night of Feb. 6, 2025, was there to kill him.
He claims the only way he could get out of there was to pull out the knife he kept for protection and use it first.
Tineo, 19, testified Wednesday, Sept. 23, in Westchester County Court, where he is on trial on murder charges in the stabbings of 16-year-olds Jayron Rivera and Tyler King-Mellanson. Rivera was stabbed in the chest inside the pizzeria on Lake Avenue and King-Mellanson was stabbed in the doorway as Tineo raced out.
Rivera was a friend turned foe who had stabbed Tineo during a fight seven months earlier. Tineo did not cooperate with police after that and there were conflicting accounts as to whose knife
had been used in that stabbing.
On questioning by his lawyer, Thomas Montella, Tineo said he had gone to Lake Avenue that night to smoke weed and hang out. Once at the pizzeria, he said he saw three people outside who seemed to be scouting out the block. He grew concerned, particularly when Rivera walked in with five other people as King-Mellanson and a teenager with crutches waited outside.
He said he thought the crutches were a weapon as the person didn't seem to need them to walk.
There were no spoken threats. He said the group was "mean mugging," staring angrily at him. And Rivera and another in his group each smacked a fist into their hand, what Tineo called "clapping."
"To me it meant this is about to go down right now," Tineo testified. "He was about to make his move."
But Tineo acted first, lunging at Rivera with his knife and stabbing him once. The medical examiner testified that the knife had to be used forcefully to poke through rib cage cartilage before hitting the heart and liver.
His lawyer Thomas Montella asked him why he had stabbed Rivera.
"To defend myself and get out of the pizzeria," he said. "He was about to attack me. He was going to do what he came to do."
Rivera and others in his group had knives with them that night but prosecutors maintain that Tineo faced no immediate threat because none of the knives had been displayed when he stabbed Rivera.
Tineo acknoweldged that it wasn't until he had stabbed Rivera that anyone in the group pulled out a knife.
Part of proving that the stabbings were justified is convincing jurors that he could not retreat. Although he did not know the two teens at the door, Tineo insisted he realized they were part of Rivera's group and thought they were there to block him from leaving.
He said he thought someone in the group might have had a gun. And having been stabbed before in the back he wasn't going to turn his back on the group to be attacked from behind again.
King-Mellanson, who was unarmed, was outside the door recording what was going on with his cell phone. Tineo said that as he ran to the door he was convinced King-Mellanson was there to block his exit. He said that when he pushed through their bodies collided and he stabbed at him.
Tino ran off thinking he was being chased. He hid the knife under a Dumpster at Sacred Heart School and lay under a van for about an hour before heading home. Although he was claiming self-defense, he said he didn't reach out to police because that would make him a rat.
He said his parents turned him in to Yonkers detectives the next day.
On cross examination by Assistant District Attorney James Bavero, Tineo denied that video of the scene showed it had been easy for him to open the door to get out. And he insisted he thought he had only stabbed King-Mellanson once but acknowledged medical testimony that the teen had suffered two stab wounds.
Bavero also suggested that Tineo was embellishing his account to convince jurors he felt threatened. When Tineo testified before the grand jury he hadn't claimed that he thought someone might have had a gun.
Although he was sure Rivera and the others were there to kill him, Tineo insisted he had not intended to kill either teen when he stabbed them.
"I'm sorry that two kids died," he testified. "I wish I would've stayed home that day."
This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: Defendant testifies about double fatal stabbing at Yonkers pizzeria
