NEWARK — Alexander Alfaro has been sentenced this afternoon to 212 years in prison for his part in the August 2007 Newark schoolyard triple killings, following emotional testimony from parents and relatives of the college-aged victims.

Last month, a jury convicted Alfaro on 16 of 17 counts — including three counts of murder — in the brutal killings behind Mount Vernon School in the city's Ivy Hill section. Superior Court Judge Michael L. Ravin in Newark imposed the sentence. Alfaro must serve 180 years before he is eligible for parole.

Prosecutors said six young men set upon four college-age friends that night. Three of the victims were lined up against a wall and shot in the back of the head. They died. A fourth was shot in the face but survived.

Alfaro, 20, becomes the third defendant in the case to receive consecutive life sentences. His half brother, Rodolfo Godinez, was convicted last spring following a trial; and Melvin Jovel, who admitted he shot all four victims, pleaded guilty four months later. Three more defendants are still awaiting trial. Prosecutors have linked all six men to a violent Central American street gang, and have called the killings gang-motivated.

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Alfaro, clad in a green jail uniform entered the courtroom in handcuffs, and wearing the same thick black eyeglasses he had on throughout trial. When Ravin asked Alfaro if he wanted to say anything, he stood up, and answered, “No, your honor.“ It was all he said. His attorney, Raymond Morasse, argued for a lesser sentence, saying his client was forced into the gang life by Godinez, and never willingly took part in the killings.

Before imposing sentence, the judge, said while it was true Godinez had influence on the younger man, Alfaro "willfully embraced that gang. That’s the life he wanted. It enticed him." Alfaro, he said has accepted no responsibility for the crime, and has shown no remorse to the families.

Using graphic language and clearly angry, the judge said of Hightower's injuries, "the machete-wielding Alexander Alfaro hacked her head and hacked her body. . . The force he used to hack her skull with the machete was such that the blade was embedded in her skull and he had to pry the blade out. That’s the evidence. That’s the evidence of what he did. That’s how Alfaro sent her to the after-life."

Killed that night were Iofemi Hightower and Dashon Harvey, both 20, and Terrance Aeriel, 18. Natasha Aeriel, 19 at the time and Terrance’s sister, was shot in the head but survived. Aeriel was in court today, did not speak.

During the month-long trial, Alfaro’s recorded statement to police following his arrest was played. In it, he admitted to cutting Hightower but said Godinez ordered him to do it. In unexpected testimony, Alfaro took the stand, saying it was Godinez, not him, who slashed Hightower with the weapon. He said Godinez, a menacing presence in his life, forced him into the gang life.

But Essex County Assistant Prosecutor Thomas McTigue, who handled the case, called Alfaro an active participant. He told the judge that Alfaro’s role in the killing “added an element of horror to it, which still reverberates through this community. Mr. Alfaro,” he said, “took a machete and savagely inflicted the terrible, terrible wounds” on Hightower that were “savage and barbaric, and they were personal.”