Relatives of Danbury cab driver Aurelio Orbez want him to be remembered for the way he brought people together, his dedication to family and his cooking. Not for his death last year in a taxi, when he was strangled by a Brewster customer over an unpaid fare and dumped in the Croton Falls Reservoir.
"His life cannot be reduced to the violent way it ended," Orbez's son William Zhunio-Fernandez said in Putnam County Court on Wednesday, Aug. 26. "He was a person with a history, dreams, work relationships and a family that loved him."
He spoke before Santos Vasquez-Ramirez was sentenced to 21 years to life in prison for a killing Putnam Judge Anthony Mole said shows that the defendant has "absolutely no regard for the value of a human life."
Vasquez-Ramirez
got the sentence he was promised when he pleaded guilty to second-degree murder two months ago.
A fisherman discovered Orbez' body in the reservoir on Dec. 7, six days after the victim's family reported him missing to Danbury police. While the search for Orbez was going on his cab was discovered abandoned at the Purdys train station.
On Dec. 1, the day he went missing, Orbez had picked Vasquez-Ramirez up at the Brewster Metro North train station. They had an argument about an unpaid fare and during a physical confrontation in the cab Orbez was killed, Vasquez-Ramirez told investigators.
Sheriff's investigators tracked Vasquez-Ramirez through license plate readers and video surveillance and he was arrested at his home in Pawling on Dec. 12.
Orbez worked for a Brewster cab company. He had a wife and four adult children and was a longtime leader at the Mormon church the family attended in Danbury.
Zhunio-Fernandez read a letter from the family in Spanish and afterwards it was read in English by an interpreter. He spoke of a father who loved traveling, helping his family and sharing in his greatest talent, cooking, particularly the empanadas for which he was widely known.
He said relatives continue to experience "sadness, anger, helplessness, anxiety and fear." He recounted the days of anguish after the disappearance. And he said the devastation of learning their father was murdered meant they were deprived of a normal farewell. Instead they had to face a police investigation and the ongoing questions about his final moments, whether he suffered and "why someone decided to take his life," no answers to which could ever "restore the peace we had before."
Assistant District Attorney Breanne Smith bemoaned that Orbez' family never had the chance to say goodbye "and that they're now left with having to rebuild a life they didn't ask for because of this senseless murder."
Vasquez-Ramirez did not speak. His lawyer, Mary Pat Long, described him as a hardworking, respectful young man who while incarcerated volunteered at the county jail for the jobs nobody wanted. She said his education stopped in the second grade.
She picked up on something in the probation report, that Vasquez-Ramirez had a perpetual grin, seemingly making light of situations. It could also be seen in media photographs of Vasquez-Ramirez as police took him to court following his arrest.
She suggested that might have been a facial tic of some kind because it in no way reflected the seriousness with which he has taken the case.
"He knows he's going to live with the emotional effect of what happened. He's not minimizing that," Long told the judge.
Zhunio-Fernandez did not utter the defendant's name and addressed him only once, calling him "you who took our father's life."
"We do not known whether you will ever care about the pain you caused," he said. "But there is something you need to know. You did not only kill Aurelio. You took our father from us. You took away years we still had left to live with him; conversations we will never have; and moments we will never be able to recover."
This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: Convicted murderer of Danbury cabdriver in Putnam sentenced
