Newark schoolyard killer sentenced to 3 life terms

NEWARK, N.J. - A man who admitted pulling the trigger in the execution-style killings of three college students in a schoolyard was sentenced yesterday to three consecutive life terms.

Melvin Jovel, 21, pleaded guilty to murder, attempted murder and weapons charges days before his trial was to begin in September.

Prosecutors said Jovel and five other young men lined up Iofemi Hightower and Dashon Harvey, both 20, and Terrance Aeriel, 18, against a schoolyard wall in Newark and shot each of them in the back of the head on a summer night in 2007.

A fourth victim survived and testified at the first trial in the case that she was sexually assaulted, slashed with a machete and shot in the head.

She also spoke in court yesterday, thanking Jovel for "allowing me to get closer to Christ" before chastising him for refusing to look at her as she spoke.

"You and your homies had a plan for me: You wanted me dead, but I'm still here," said the woman. "Have fun living your fancy life in jail," she added.

Four other defendants are in jail awaiting trial.

Prosecutors said Rodolfo Godinez, a legal immigrant from Nicaragua who already has been convicted and imprisoned; Jovel, an illegal Honduran immigrant, and several of the defendants were engaging in an initiation ritual for members of the MS-13 street gang. The men did not know the victims, prosecutors said. Jovel and at least two of the other suspects had lived in an apartment complex across the street from the scene of the slayings.

The four victims attended or planned to attend Delaware State University in Dover.