It started with something almost everyone on Long Island has dealt with before: a parking dispute.
But on a quiet stretch of Fifth Avenue in Bay Shore, that moment spiraled into a brutal chain of events that ended in a man’s death and a jury’s verdict years later.
Prosecutors say 29-year-old Linver Ortiz Ponce, of Central Islip, had parked his red Camaro in front of a home just before midnight on September 17, 2022. What should have been an ordinary night quickly turned tense when 23-year-old Kayla Alvarenga confronted him and demanded he move the car.
He didn’t.
According to evidence presented at trial, that decision set off something far more dangerous than anyone nearby could have imagined.
Prosecutors said Alvarenga picked up the phone and called in help.
Within hours, a group arrived in a stolen BMW, the vehicle taken earlier that night during a carjacking in Bay Shore. The group, which included Christopher Perdomo and several teenagers, allegedly dragged Ortiz Ponce from his car while he slept, beat him, and stole his vehicle.
Injured and terrified, the victim ran.
He made it to a nearby gas station, hiding between cars in a desperate attempt to escape. But investigators say Alvarenga wasn’t finished.
Surveillance video would later capture the moment everything changed.
Footage showed the victim being spotted, then abducted at gunpoint and forced into the BMW. That video became one of the key pieces of evidence in unraveling what happened next.
From there, the group followed Alvarenga to a church parking lot.
What happened in that lot was described in court as relentless.
Prosecutors said the victim was beaten again before Alvarenga ordered Perdomo to kill him. As Ortiz Ponce tried to crawl away, he was shot multiple times.
The group fled, abandoning the stolen vehicles in wooded and residential areas in Smithtown and Brentwood before taking a rideshare back to Bay Shore. Authorities said money from the victim’s wallet was divided among them.
The case didn’t end that night.
Perdomo was eventually tracked down and arrested in Georgia in 2024. He later pleaded guilty, along with five teenage co-defendants, several of whom testified against Alvarenga during the trial.
That testimony, combined with surveillance footage and other evidence, became the turning point.
On March 26, 2026, a jury found Alvarenga guilty of first-degree murder, kidnapping, robbery, and conspiracy after a full trial in Suffolk County.
She now faces a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole when she returns to court on April 28.
What began as a dispute over a parking spot ended in a coordinated killing that prosecutors described as both calculated and deeply disturbing.
Photo: SCDA
