A Glen Cove man who ambushed his estranged mother-in-law in a West Hempstead restaurant parking lot as her family left a birthday party for her daughter is going to prison for a least 25 years.
Erick Corado Gonzalez, 29, was sentenced Thursday to 25 years to life in prison for the September 2024 killing of 51-year-old grandmother Ana Espinoza.
Prosecutors had asked for 30 years to life, Nassau County District Attorney Anne Donnelly said.
Corado Gonzalez pleaded guilty Sept. 3 before Judge Caryn Fink to second-degree murder and second-degree attempted murder.
“The defendant ambushed his mother-in-law in a restaurant parking lot, brutally taking her life in front of her loved ones and his three-year-old son all because of his own selfish rage,” Donnelly said.
Uninvited to the party
Espinoza, her husband and other relatives gathered Sept. 28, 2024, at La Candela II restaurant in West Hempstead to celebrate her adult daughter’s birthday, according to the DA’s office.
Corado Gonzalez — the daughter’s estranged husband — was not invited.
Just after midnight on Sept. 29, as the family exited the Peruvian restaurant and walked to their cars, Corado Gonzalez approached Espinoza in the parking lot and stabbed her at least seven times in the torso, prosecutors said.
When Espinoza’s husband tried to intervene, Corado Gonzalez stabbed him in the hand.
After Espinoza’s adult son also rushed to help his mother, Corado Gonzalez pointed an imitation pistol at him and warned him not to follow, prosecutors said. He then ran off.
Corado Gonzalez’s 3-year-old son was there for the attack, according to the DA’s office.
Espinoza and her husband were taken to NYU Langone Long Island Hospital in Mineola. Espinoza suffered hemorrhagic shock from a stab wound to the neck and was pronounced dead at 3:58 a.m., prosecutors said.
Caught in New Jersey
Corado Gonzalez fled the state after the attack. Local authorities arrested him later that day in Linden, New Jersey.
Investigators recovered a knife from the restaurant parking lot and an imitation pistol from the trunk of Corado Gonzalez’s car, the DA’s office said.
“Ana Espinoza should be here today enjoying the life she built with her children and watching her grandchildren grow,” Donnelly said. “Instead, Erick Corado Gonzalez turned her family’s night of celebration into a lifetime of grief.”
“I feel a lot of hate when I see him,” her son Gerson Espinoza told NBC4 New York outside court after his sentencing.
“We literally lost somebody that was the matriarch of our family,” said Espinoza’s sister-in-law, Danielle Freshnour Espinoza. “He’s a coward. He’s an absolute coward. I don’t think he has any remorse.”
Top: La Candela II in West Hempstead (Google Maps Street View).
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