New Cassel, NY - November 22nd, 2013 - Nassau County District Attorney Kathleen Rice announced today that a New Cassel man has received the maximum sentence of 25 years in prison for the vicious beating of an elderly man suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease in 2012.
Judge Alan Honorof gave Josue Bonilla, 23, the maximum sentence on all counts in the case: two counts of Assault in the First Degree and four counts of Assault in the Second Degree. The sentences will run concurrently. Bonilla was also sentenced to five years of post-release supervision and must pay $15,181 in restitution for his victim’s medical expenses.
“Nothing will give this victim and his family their lives back as they were before this brutal, inhumane attack, but today’s sentence reflects the heinousness of this crime and sends the message that people who commit violent crimes of this nature will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” DA Rice said.
DA Rice said that at approximately 8:20 p.m. on April 28, 2012, a 68-year-old man suffering from dementia and Alzheimer’s disease was walking on Grayston Street in New Cassel when he was confronted by Bonilla. Bonilla began to yell at the victim, who lives in Hicksville but had become lost. After the victim replied, “I don’t have anything,” Bonilla punched him in the jaw, breaking the victim’s dentures and knocking him to the ground.
Bonilla then began punching and kicking the unconscious victim, and stomping on his head, chest, and back so hard that he left shoe marks on the victim’s body. Bonilla fled the scene but was arrested at his home on June 14, 2012 by members of the Nassau County Police Department’s Third Precinct.
The victim is expected to be in a vegetative state for the rest of his life.
It took a jury two days to convict Bonilla in July. The jury acquitted Bonilla of two counts of Robbery in the First Degree and one count of Grand Larceny in the Fourth Degree.
Deputy Bureau Chief Joseph LaRocca and Assistant District Attorney Amanda Burke of DA Rice’s Special Victims Bureau are prosecuting the case. Bonilla is represented by Robert Schalk, Esq.