A teen charged as one of the alleged shooters in a triple homicide in the 400 block of N. 5th St. in 2023 will stand trial for homicide as an adult, judge rules Thursday.
Lebanon County Court of Common Pleas Judge Charles Jones Jr. denied a petition Monday afternoon asking that James Fernandez-Reyes stand trial in juvenile court after two months of hearings. Fernandez-Reyes is charged with homicide for the deaths of Sebastian Perez-Salome, 9, Jesus Perez-Salome, 8, and Joshua Lugo-Perez, 19, were killed in a shooting on May 30, 2023.
Since his arrest in 2023, Fernandez-Reyes has not publicly expressed concern for the victims or understand why he is in jail, according to Jones.
“Even if I believe your story that you had a gun, you pulled the trigger and it jammed, you pointed a gun in the direction of a house and people on the back porch and you pulled the trigger,” he said to Fernandez-Reyes during his ruling. “It is very concerning to me that you don’t understand what that means.”
Jones added that Fernandez-Reyes had chances before the shooting to get out of a violent lifestyle, with his mother, school and other organizations willing to provide assistance. Fernandez-Reyes instead sought people doing what they weren’t suppose to and willing to give him access to firearms, which he proudly displayed in videos on Instagram.
“This is the image that you wanted to portray: I’m a grown-ass man,” Jones said to Fernandez-Reyes. “I don’t necessarily know what that means or what you are trying to say other than ‘I’m trouble. Look out for me.'”
Despite answering standard questions to the judge, Fernandez-Reyes did not testify during these proceedings.
What happened
On May 30, Joshua Lugo-Perez, along with 9-year-old Sebastian Perez-Salome and 8-year-old Jesus Perez-Salome, were shot and killed by three assailants outside the rear of their home in the 400 Block of N. 5th Street.
Louis Cancel, 33, of Lebanon, was hit in the next-door residence by a stray bullet during the same shooting. Minnick testified that Cancel received one gunshot wound to the abdomen, and was taken to the Hershey Medical Center for surgery.
A total of 30 shell casings were found near the scene, which Lebanon City Police detectives identified as rounds from two different firearms. Casings were found for a .9mm handgun and 24 rounds from an AM-15 sports rifle, which left .223 and 5.56 casings at the scene.
Fernandez-Reyes, along with Alex Torres-Santos, was arrested May 31 after the Lebanon County SWAT team executed a search warrant in the 400 block of North 9th Street. A search of their residence revealed multiple firearms, including a sports rifle and a secondary weapon, which officials said was consistent with the shell casings located at the scene.
Fernandez-Reyes was located by police inside a locked room, with a gym bag in the closet containing three magazines used for an AM sports rifle along with rounds of ammunition. Officers also confiscated Fernandez-Reyes phone during the raid.
Later, Fernandez-Reyes told police he was carrying a .380 handgun during the night of the 2023 shootings that jammed.
“Three people are deceased, two of them were kids,” he said to Fernandez-Reyes Monday. “Another individual was injured. That type of thing tends to make people sleep a little less silently at night, and worry about what’s going on.”
Ivan Claudio-Rosero, 27, a third shooter, was arrested in a public area in North Philadelphia June 6 after a week-long manhunt for him conducted by local law enforcement, Pennsylvania State Police and the United States Marshal’s Fugitive Task Force.
Before May 30
On May 23, 2023, almost a week before the Lebanon shooting, Reading police officers responded to a home the 140 Block of South 6th Street for a burglary. Reading Police Department Criminal Investigator Christopher Blauser testified Sept. 5, 2024 that two firearms and $8,000 were stolen from the residence.
Video footage obtained by officers from the home show Fernandez-Reyes entering a home on May 23, kicking open the door and taking items from the residence. Reading Police have charge Fernandez-Reyes with multiple burglary and theft counts, according to Blauser.
The video from the Berks County robbery was located on Fernandez-Reyes’ phone, Lebanon County Chief Detective Jonathan Hess testified Sept. 5. Another video on the phone also shows money and weapons that appeared identical to those stolen in the South 6th Street burglary.
During the hearings, prosecutors provided various videos from Fernandez-Reyes’ phone and Instagram where he would regularly brandish weapons and point them at the camera while singing and shouting explicit language. Some of the weapons shown in these videos included an AR-15 sports rifle that appeared to be identical to the ones police confiscated in the May 31 raid and identified to be used during the Lebanon triple homicide.
The videos shown in court were time stamped as early as the beginning of May 2023 to almost 24 hours before the shooting, according to the prosecution.
Fernandez-Reyes’ background
Fernandez-Reyes moved to Rochester, New York from Puerto Rico in 2019. Officials testified that there was no supervision from Fernandez-Reyes’ parents, and he showed signs of having mental disabilities and problems with school. He began smoking marijuana at age 10 and started drinking alcohol around the same .
It was during this time that Fernandez-Reyes joined New York Street gangs called the Bloods and TGS, according to witness testimony. Officials testified that he would often steal several handguns and show them off to other kids. He also started using other drugs including crack cocaine and methamphetamines.
“Eventually, to no surprise, he leaves the family home and starts living with friends on the street,” clinical psychologist Dr. Frank Dattilio, who testified for the defense, said on Aug. 9. “Mother didn’t know where he was … So you can image how he was ripping and running, stealing and carrying guns, and hanging out with these youth. In essence, the street gangs became his family, which often happens with a lot of wayward youth.”
An Amber alert was issued in November 2021 for Fernandez-Reyes after Rochester Police believed him to be taken by five masked men. Dattilio testified that Fernandez Reyes said one of the gangs he was affiliated with took him and broke his nose during that incident.
Kella Reyes-Parissi, mother of James, testified during the hearing that her son was involved with the Monroe County Juvenile Probation while in New York, with the family filing a Person in Need of Supervision petition with the department. She said Fernandez-Reyes was on house arrest with electronic monitoring after the second time police found him with a firearm, only for her son to cut the ankle monitor off.
Reyes-Parissi attempted to look away when phone and Instagram videos were presented by the prosecution during the hearing, and when crime scene photos that showed one of the victims were introduced.
The family moved to South Dakota with Reyes-Parissi’s sister, where prosecutors said Fernandez-Reyes was accused as a juvenile of stealing a car and being involved in a police chase. During the hearing, prosecutors said charges were not pursued in that case because South Dakota law enforcement asked the family to leave the area.
Once the family returned to Rochester, witnesses testified that Fernandez-Reyes went back to stealing weapons and money from his parents’ home, using drugs and leaving the home all hours of the day. Witnesses said he almost never attended school and was diagnosed with several learning disabilities.
Fernandez-Reyes is also a person of interest in the shooting death of 12-year-old Juan Lopez in 2022. Lopez was a seventh-grader at the Benjamin Franklin Educational Campus in Rochester, New York.
“At the time of his arrest for these heinous crimes in Pennsylvania, Fernandez-Reyes had an active warrant from Monroe County Family Court related to an arrest in the City of Rochester on September 20, 2022, in which he was issued an appearance ticket for being in possession of a loaded Kel-Tec .380 caliber handgun,” Rochester Police Lt. Greg Bello told the Lebanon Daily News in 2023.
Fernandez-Reyes: Teen charged in Lebanon triple homicide is a person of interest in New York boy’s homicide
After being incarcerated in the Lebanon County and Leigh County Prisons starting in 2023, officials testified that Fernandez-Reyes was involved in multiple fights. Prison officials also found residue of the antihistamine Vistaril on a rolled up playing card in his cell.
Reyes-Parissi and Dattilio testified that Fernandez Reyes’ issues were improving in prison, and that he was even attending classes. Defense witnesses addressed that those issues in prison were at the beginning of his incarceration, and that since being introduced to various programs and treatments he showed promise for rehabilitation.
“He has had minimal misconducts inside the prison,” Assistant Public Defender Michael Light II wrote in a brief. “James has aspirations of a productive future by pursuing a career in baking and/or cooking. James has also expressed that he does not want to be part of the gang life which he has been subjected to for his adolescent life.”
However, Dattilio said that he was on the fence about whether there are juvenile programs would work for Fernandez-Reyes before he turns 21. Any program would require intensive treatment with supervision, and include methods to deal with substance abuse and alcohol issues.
There has been nothing about Fernandez-Reyes’ life that has not had some type of chaos attached to it, Jones said.
“What you are charged with is the end result of what you seeked out,” he said to Fernandez-Reyes Monday.
Officials said that the earliest a trial could be held for Fernandez-Reyes, Torres-Santos, and Claudio-Rosero would be January 2025.
The district attorney’s office will be seeking the death penalty against Torres-Santos and Claudio-Rosero for the fatal shootings in 2023. Fernandez-Reyes, who was 16 at the time of the shootings, is not eligible for the death penalty because of his age, according to officials.
Matthew Toth is a reporter for the Lebanon Daily News. Reach him at mtoth@ldnews.com or on X at @DAMattToth.
This article originally appeared on Lebanon Daily News: Teen arrested in 2023 Lebanon triple homicide to be tried as an adult
