Top inset: Annmarie Drago. Bottom inset: Evelyn Rodriguez. Background: The confrontation between Drago and Rodriguez on a street in Long Island. (WCBS/YouTube)
A New York woman who admitted to running over and killing a grieving mother at the same Long Island spot where the victim’s daughter had been beaten with bats and hacked to death two years earlier by machete-wielding members of the Mara Salvatrucha gang was sentenced to probation.
Annmarie Drago, 63, learned her fate on Tuesday for fatally striking Evelyn Rodriguez, 50, with her vehicle following a dispute about Drago’s dismantling of a memorial honoring Rodriguez’s slain daughter, 16-year-old Kayla Cuevas. Drago pleaded guilty in May to a charge of criminally negligent homicide. Prosecutors had recommended one to three years in prison.
Rodriguez’s partner, Freddy Cuevas, was disappointed about the punishment, New York CBS affiliate WCBS reported.
“We didn’t get the justice that we was looking for,” Cuevas said outside court, the station reported. “Her getting probation, that’s like a slap in the hand.”
In court, the victim’s surviving daughters addressed Drago, the outlet reported.
“I will never forgive you for what you did,” Kaitlyn Cuevas, 14, said.
“There will still be no peace in me or my family’s heart,” said Kelsey Cuevas, 24.
As Law&Crime reported, Rodriguez was killed on Sept. 14, 2018, when members of the media filming for a vigil that evening called her after Drago dismantled the memorial to her daughter on a sidewalk in front of her home in Brentwood.
Drago, who was involved in selling a house near the site, threw away candles, a tablecloth, flower bouquets and vases. She loaded a table, photo and floral arrangement in the back of her SUV and left, prosecutors said.
Then she returned and got into a dispute with Rodriguez over the memorial. With the media filming, Rodriguez approached Drago’s vehicle and demanded she return the items. Drago accelerated her vehicle, knocking Rodriguez down, and drove over her, prosecutors said. Rodriguez’s skull was fractured, and she died at a hospital.
Drago was arrested, convicted and sentenced on a felony charge of criminally negligent homicide. But in 2022, a New York appeals court reversed the conviction after determining that prosecutors made “improper comments during summation.”
Prosecutors retried her in October, and a jury deadlocked on the charge. Prosecutors had vowed to retry her a third time before Drago entered her guilty plea.
Drago’s defense attorney said at the trial that his client was trying to get away from a tense scene as Rodriguez shouted expletives at her.
“Fight or flight,” the defense attorney said, according to Newsday. “Freddy and Evelyn were there for a fight, [Drago] was not … Flight was the only reasonable thing to do.”
Prosecutors countered, “She wasn’t fleeing out of fear, she was fleeing out of guilt,” the newspaper reported.
As Law&Crime has previously reported, Kayla and her best friend, Nisa Mickens, 15, were chased down and slaughtered by members of the MS-13 gang on Sept. 13, 2016. The gang members drove up to the girls as they walked near an elementary school, jumped out of a car and attacked them, then hopped back in the car and drove off. Nisa’s slashed and beaten body was found that night. Kayla’s body was discovered the following day behind a house.
The tragedy prompted Rodriguez to become an anti-gang activist. She and Nisa’s family were invited to appear with then-President Donald Trump in 2018 in a speech titled “What You Need To Know About The Violent Animals Of MS-13.” At his State of the Union address that year, Trump recognized Rodriquez and Nisa’s parents. Rodriguez also spoke about the murder of her daughter during a roundtable on immigration policy with Trump in 2018 in New York.
Freddy Cuevas, left, and President Donald Trump listen as Evelyn Rodriguez speaks about the murder of her daughter by the MS-13 street gang during a roundtable on immigration policy at Morrelly Homeland Security Center, Wednesday, May 23, 2018, in Bethpage, N.Y. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
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