{"id":211288,"date":"2026-04-27T15:46:35","date_gmt":"2026-04-27T15:46:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/211288\/"},"modified":"2026-04-27T15:46:35","modified_gmt":"2026-04-27T15:46:35","slug":"ex-con-sentenced-to-115-years-to-life-for-shooting-nypd-cop-jonathan-diller-to-death-during-queens-car-stop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/211288\/","title":{"rendered":"Ex-con sentenced to 115 years to life for shooting NYPD cop Jonathan Diller to death during Queens car stop"},"content":{"rendered":"

The ex-con who shot and killed<\/a> NYPD Officer Jonathan Diller during a chaotic Queens car stop will spend 115 years to life behind bars for manslaughter, attempted murder and other charges.<\/p>\n

The sentence, handed down Monday by Queens Supreme Court Justice Michael Aloise, came after a dramatic three-week trial which ended with a jury acquitting Guy Rivera, 35,<\/a> of first-degree murder, but convicting him of aggravated manslaughter, attempted murder and gun charges.<\/p>\n

\u201cYour sentence to me was determined the second you pulled that trigger,\u201d\u00a0Aloise told Rivera as he handed down the lengthy sentence. \u201cIt took me five minutes to calculate the numbers. It\u2019s going to take you a lifetime to calculate the damage you did and the damage you caused.\u201d<\/p>\n

Diller\u2019s widow, Stephanie Diller, testified in court moments before the sentence was handed down about the agony she has endured.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn a single moment, everything that was my life was gone,\u201d she said. \u201cI wanted a lifetime with him.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI did not get to hold his hand,\u201d she added. \u201cI did not get to say goodbye. I did not get to give him the love and the peace he deserved in his final moments.\u201d<\/p>\n

But she wasn\u2019t even the biggest victim, Stephanie said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe person who lost the most is our son Ryan,\u201d she said. \u201cHe will grow up without the love of his father.\u201d<\/p>\n

She went on to address her husband\u2019s killer directly.<\/p>\n

\u201cMr. Rivera, only you know what was in your heart that day,\u201d she said.\u00a0 \u201cOne day, you will stand before God and answer for what you did to Jonathan.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYour actions that day cannot be undone. Your actions that day gave me a life sentence without him,\u201d she added.\u00a0\u201cWhen I leave this courtroom, I will no longer speak of you. I will no longer think of you.\u201d<\/p>\n

The verdict on the lesser charge angered Diller\u2019s colleagues in the NYPD. While the murder acquittal does take life without parole off the table, the sentence means Rivera will nonetheless likely spend the rest of his life in prison.<\/p>\n

Diller\u2019s mother also addressed the courtroom Monday.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy world has been completely shattered. Everything feels empty without him,\u201d Fran Diller said. \u201cAll I can feel is an unbearable ache of my son not being there.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI have looked at the defendant over the last two years, and at every single court hearing I have never seen any remorse, only a concern for himself,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n

Diller, 31, was working on his day off on March 25, 2024 as part of a five-officer team in the 101st Precinct, when another member of the unit, Sgt. Sasha Rosen, spotted an L-shaped object in the pocket of the suspect\u2019s hooded sweatshirt on Mott Ave. in Far Rockaway.<\/p>\n

Rosen and Diller followed Rivera until he got into the passenger seat of a parked Kia sedan, and a third cop, Detective Dario Fernandez, surrounded the vehicle. Diller got the attention of the other two members of his team, Detectives Veckash Khedna and Derval Whyte \u2014 and within seconds, Diller was shot in the stomach.<\/a><\/p>\n

Prosecutors argued that Rivera reached for his gun and deliberately fired a single shot at Diller in an attempt to blast his way out of his inevitable arrest, then pointed his weapon at Rosen\u2019s chest, but the gun jammed. Khedna fired twice after the fatal shot, wounding Rivera.<\/p>\n

Rivera\u2019s defense team contended that the gun went off inadvertently in a struggle after Rosen reached into the car and grabbed Rivera.<\/p>\n

The jurors saw video of the shooting from several angles, including the officers\u2019 body-worn cameras and from nearby security cameras, and heard testimony from Diller\u2019s grief-stricken widow and the other member of Diller\u2019s unit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The ex-con who shot and killed NYPD Officer Jonathan Diller during a chaotic Queens car stop will spend…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":211289,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[262,263,266,85,267,9,24,264,12,63,261,122,124,123,265],"class_list":["post-211288","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-city","tag-county","tag-crime-and-public-safety","tag-latest-headlines","tag-local-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-county","tag-news","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-crime","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news","tag-sub-county-region"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211288","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=211288"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211288\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/211289"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=211288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=211288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=211288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}