A man who worked as a busboy at a Times Square nightclub and killed a patron on the club's rooftop in 2008 was sentenced to at least 20 years in prison yesterday. Syed Rahman, who already agreed to plead guilty to the murder charges earlier this year, "muttered" (according to the Post) an apology, "I want to express my deepest sympathy to the friends and family of Ingrid Rivera. I know I caused a tremendous amount of pain."
Rivera (pictured) and a friend went to the now-closed Spotlight karaoke club in August 2008, in hopes of seeing Lil Kim, who was celebrating her birthday there. Rivera was kicked out of the club, but Rahman got her back in the club. He then took her to rooftop, where police say Rivera fought off his advances, only for him to bludgeon her with a metal pipe and shove the 24-year-old's body into an electrical closet.
The NY Times reports that Rivera's mother described the pain she's felt since her daughter's death, "Ingrid Estrada has had problems sleeping at night for more than a year and a half. She is sometimes listless at work, unable to get anything done. It hurts when she hears her 9-year-old son, Joshua, who has Down syndrome, ask for his sister. She cannot look at the roof of a building without horrific images flashing through her mind." Estrada told the judge, "Thank God that he’s locked up — somebody who will never be able to kill anybody else. Thank you for locking him up so he could pay for this murder."
