Mark Clay says he sometimes dreamed of killing Ronald Hechavarria to avenge the stabbing death of his brother two years ago in Mount Vernon.
“But every day and night when I take his life I don’t get back what I lost,” Clay told Westchester Judge Maurice Dean Williams at Hechavarria’s sentencing on Friday, May 8. “It doesn’t do nothing.”
Williams sentenced Hechavarria to 25 years in prison, the term he was promised when he pleaded guilty in January to first-degree manslaughter in the Aug. 1, 2024, killing of Michael Clay on East Third Street.
“Unfortunately in life there is no undo button,” the judge said. “And the end result is we have two mothers here, one who has lost her son, one who is going to lose her son for an extended period of time. But she will get back her son. She won’t.”
Video surveillance showed Clay sitting at the corner of Union Avenue, his shirt over his head, when Hechavarria pulled something from his pocket, walked up to him and slashed and stabbed him several times. They struggled down the block as Hechavarria stabbed him more times before leaving in a cab.
Clay got a ride to Montefiore Mount Vernon hospital where he died a short time later.
Hechavarria went to his girlfriend’s apartment in the Bronx, then to a hospital for treatment of a wound to his hand. He then made his way to Norfolk, Va. where he was arrested 11 days later by police there and the FBI.
He initially claimed Clay had a knife and that he hit Clay but didn’t know how he could have died. Later he said he thought Clay was going to rob him. He said they hit each other and Hechavarria left when he realized he was bleeding but didn’t acknowledge wielding the knife or seriously injuring Clay.
He was charged with second-degree murder but in January was allowed to plead guilty to the manslaughter charge with the maximum 25-year prison term.
Assistant District Attorney James Bavero called the killing “a completely unnecessary and senseless act of violence.” He said 37-year-old Michael Clay was a kind man and so beloved on the street that it was one of the rare times in Mount Vernon that people strove to help police solve a killing.
On Friday, Hechavarria, 36, apologized to Clay’s family and his own and said he hoped the victim’s relatives could someday forgive him.
“Looking back, I wish there wasn’t any conflict,” he told Williams. “Things escalated and irrational, poor decisions were made.”
Olga Clay said the sentence does not bring her son back but she was so thankful that Mount Vernon police “were able to get the animal off the street because I feel nothing but profound grief in my soul.”
Her oldest son was also a homicide victim years earlier so what happened to Michael Clay was always something Mark Clay feared. He said he had hope for Hechavarria but also a message to him from God.
“Life is precious,” he said. “When your hands have taken another soul from this life, that’s not something any amount of time in jail can change.”
He said he has put aside the dreams of harming Hechavarria because “it held my life back.”
“I want to be stronger than that,” he said. “And set an example for younger people who go through things I unfortunately had to go through two times now.”
This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: Maximum prison term given in Mount Vernon fatal stabbing
Reporting by Jonathan Bandler, Rockland/Westchester Journal News / Rockland/Westchester Journal News
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