NEW YORK, N.Y. — The second of two men who forced their way into a Harlem apartment at gunpoint and robbed a grandmother while her young grandson was home will spend 20 years in a New York state prison, the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office announced Friday.
Justin Torres, 32, learned his sentence after a state Supreme Court jury found him guilty in June of first-degree burglary and first-degree robbery, along with a count of child endangerment and other charges. His co-defendant, Joshua Gomez, 35, admitted to second-degree robbery and was given a 4 1/2 year term in July 2025.
The break-in happened shortly after midnight on Oct. 9, 2024. Prosecutors said the pair rode in Torres’ car to an apartment building on Manhattan Avenue, close to West 118th Street,, knocked on the door and shoved inside once the 56-year-old woman opened it, each man holding a gun.
With the woman and the 5-year-old boy held at gunpoint, the two demanded to be shown the safe, ransacked the home and made off with the safe along with cash, passports and the woman’s cellphone, then headed back to Torres’ residence.
NYPD detectives and prosecutors from the district attorney’s office investigated the robbery jointly. Both defendants live in the Bronx, and a grand jury indictment followed the arrests, with Torres choosing to take his case to trial while Gomez entered a plea.
Police picked up Torres about three weeks after the robbery, on Oct. 30, 2024, and Gomez was taken into custody that Nov. 25. The most serious counts Torres was convicted of, first-degree burglary and first-degree robbery, are class B felonies under state law, which is why his term is several times longer than the one his partner received after pleading guilty.
District Attorney Alvin Bragg said the attack left the family feeling unsafe in the one place they should feel most secure, and said that with Friday’s sentence the last of the two defendants has now been held accountable.
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