NEW YORK — Two men used a GPS tracker to stalk a former friend before shooting him to death in front of his mother as they stole his diamond jewelry, according to prosecutors and the victim’s heartbroken family.
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Welfy Espinal, 25, and Lenyn Toribio, 27, were charged in a federal indictment unsealed Friday with interstate stalking resulting in death in the shocking slay of 24-year-old Jeremy Ortega on April 13, 2025.
“I saw everything,” the victim’s mother, Yokasta Ortega, told the New York Daily News Monday. “I was yelling, ‘Please don’t kill my son, please don’t kill my son!’”
Just days before he was gunned down, Jeremy posted a picture of himself on Instagram with a flashy diamond watch on his wrist over the caption, “Thank God for another year.”
The suspects allegedly shot Jeremy twice in the chest as he was arriving home on Quincy Ave. near Hardin Ave. in Throggs Neck about 4:45 a.m.
“Why would you do that? Why would you kill him that way? What was all the envy and hate for?” Yokasta said. “You knew that my son was a really good person — because you grew up with him!”
The victim’s mother said she had unlocked her home’s front door for her son, who had forgotten his keys, and went upstairs to await his return. When she didn’t hear him enter, she glanced outside to see Jeremy attempting to flee his attackers.
“Once I realized he was running, I ran straight downstairs and then that’s when I saw Welfy shooting him from behind,” Yokasta said. “It was terrible.”
The mom ran to her wounded son, shaking him and tapping his face, but he showed no signs of life. Medics rushed Jeremy to Jacobi Medical Center, where he died about an hour later.
“I feel good that they have been caught, but nothing can bring my son back,” said Yokasta. “They ruined my life. They killed him right in front of me. It’s terrible.”
Manhattan U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton said Espinal was busted in New Jersey, while Toribio is still being sought.
Investigators traced the killers’ scheme back to March 28, 2025, the day Toribio activated the GPS tracking device that Espinal placed under the victim’s car a few days later, Clayton said. The pair used the device to track the victim the following day to an Upper Manhattan nightclub, where they observed Jeremy wearing diamond-studded jewelry.
On April 12, 2025, the suspects followed Jeremy to a Midtown restaurant, then drove to Throggs Neck to surveil the neighborhood where they planned to rob him later that night, circling the block around Jeremy’s home for roughly 10 minutes, court documents say.
The pair then left, switched vehicles and returned about an hour before Jeremy arrived home. When they spotted their target, the suspects chased him down, shot him multiple times and stole a bag containing the victim’s diamond jewelry, Clayton said.
The suspects fled using multiple vehicles and a stolen license plate to avoid detection — but they never removed the tracker from Jeremy’s car, the feds say.
Investigators traced the device back to Toribio, who registered the tracker using his name, email and phone number. Data collected from the tracker also showed the device inside Toribio’s home prior to it being placed under the victim’s car.
Jeremy’s sister Brianna Ortega said that Espinal was an old friend of her brother’s from high school and that the killer was once welcome in their home.
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Espinal “would do everything with Jeremy growing up,” said Brianna, 19. “They would ride around in the car together. They would go play basketball … They would do a lot of stuff together.”
Espinal has multiple arrests on his record, most recently in October when he was discovered carrying a dagger during a traffic stop, court documents show. A month before that, he drove into oncoming traffic in an attempt to flee another traffic stop, but was arrested after refusing multiple orders to exit his vehicle. He was also cuffed inside his Bronx home in 2024 after punching a family member in the face and choking them.
An attorney for Espinal declined to comment on his arrest in Jeremy’s slaying.
The victim was also acquainted with Toribio, whom he met a few years before the attack, his sister said. The victim’s family believes his killers were jealous of Jeremy, who worked as a supervisor at a recycling company.
The victim’s younger brother recalled learning of the attack from his mother, who Facetimed him moments after Jeremy was shot.
“She called me and she was in so much agony and distress that I couldn’t figure out what was going on,” said Jayden Ortega, 21. “She was telling me what was happening but it wasn’t clicking for me. For a second, I just thought to myself, ‘Is this real?’”
Jeremy had a diamond watch and a Cartier bracelet in a Louis Vuitton messenger bag that was stolen by the duo, his sister said. He was also wearing a chain that was not stolen.
“They took whatever jewelry was in his bag that he had on him,” the victim’s sister said.
Jeremy was raised by a single mother and helped raise his younger siblings.
“He was like a father figure,” Brianna said. “He barely slept. He was always just working and working and working.”
Jeremy, who was the victim of a previous gunpoint robbery, appeared tense in the months leading up to his death.
“He just felt like a lot of people were watching him and focused on him,” Brianna said. “So he was always moving with this sort of caution whenever he stepped out of the house.”
Now the family’s house “just feels empty,” Brianna said. “He was what gave life to this house. He was so full of joy and happy.”
Brianna recalled her 12th birthday, when Jeremy took her to Six Flags Great Adventure and then gave her a green iPhone she wanted.
“He was always excited, like every day. There was not a day where he woke up and he wasn’t like that,” Brianna said. “He just enjoyed and was very content with life.”
Jeremy, who cops say had no criminal record, graduated from James Monroe High School in 2019.
His brother called him “a very caring person.”
“[Jeremy] was always the loudest in the house, making jokes, uplifting moods,” said Jayden. “He was someone that anyone would want to be around.”
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