Man who killed C.W. Post basketball star gets 18 years in prison

Dawn Thompson watched in tears Friday as a former Latin Kings street gang member was sentenced to more than 18 years in prison for fatally shooting her son — a C.W. Post basketball star — in 2005.

Jaime Rivera, who also belonged to the Queen Nation street gang, was ordered to prison for 220 months for killing Tafare Berryman, who was 22 at the time and weeks away from graduating.

The case went unsolved for 12 years despite being featured on “America’s Most Wanted” and the offer of a $10,000 reward for information on the killing.

But officials said Thompson never gave up and kept pushing them to find her son’s killer.

They did — in 2017, as they arrested Rivera after getting an anonymous tip. He confessed two years later and on Friday received his sentence from U.S. District Court Judge Denis R. Hurley in Central Islip.

Thompson said she was satisfied, though she wanted even more years for Rivera, 37, of Freeport.

“That pain will never go away,” she said. “As a mother … you have an emptiness in your life and in your stomach.”

Rivera took “something precious from me,” she said. “For you to just take somebody’s life because you want to move up in a gang — it’s so senseless.”

Rivera told the family in court that he was remorseful, hoped they will forgive him though he doesn’t expect they will, and has done what he can in the last five years in prison to turn himself around.

“I harmed you and your family,” Rivera said, adding that the killing — apparently a case of mistaken identity — “will weigh very heavy on my soul.”

On April 2, 2005, several hundred C.W. Post students who had been at a fashion show went to the La Mansion Club in Island Park. The club also had become a hangout for the Latin Kings, according to officials.

Berryman — a 6-foot-6, 220-pound star basketball player at Tilden High School in East Flatbush, Brooklyn, before he was recruited by the school now named LIU Post — was in the crowd.

A brawl broke out between gang members and a C.W. Post student. Neither Berryman nor his friend Aaron Daly-Frith were involved, officials said. But as they walked to their car in the parking lot to escape the clash, Daly-Frith was hit in the head with a bottle and started bleeding.

The two drove away. Daly-Frith was at the wheel and Berryman in the passenger’s seat. Daly-Frith’s bleeding soon clouded his vision. He stopped to let Berryman drive.

As Berryman switched to the driver’s seat, Rivera, following in a car, pulled up alongside. He fired two shots, officials said. One hit Berryman in an arm, the other in the head. It was fatal.

Rivera believed he was shooting Daly-Frith to advance himself in the Latin Kings. He mistakenly thought Daly-Frith, who, like Berryman, was not a gang member, had assaulted a leader of the gang during the fight, officials said.

On Friday, Thompson did not appear overly receptive to Rivera’s request for forgiveness.

“I miss my son,” she tearfully told Judge Hurley. “Seventeen years is not enough for me, what we have been through,” she added, referring to what appeared to be a plea agreement between the prosecutors and defense.

Hurley went beyond that, with a sentence of more than 18 years, even though he praised Rivera for seeming to get his life back on track while he's been in prison.

Rivera’s defense attorneys declined to comment outside court.

Breon Peace, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said: “Tafare Berryman, a college student, athlete and beloved member of the Brooklyn and Long Island communities, was senselessly murdered, depriving him of the bright future he worked so hard to achieve and leaving his bereaved family shattered.” 

“This murder, which occurred 17 years ago, was never forgotten and is an example of this office’s unwavering commitment to justice for the victims of gang violence,” he said.

After the sentencing, Thompson stood outside in the rain as she prepared to get into a car to take her back to her home in Brooklyn, two of her surviving sons with her.

While the case is over, she said, the torment will go on.

But, she said, “I’m finally going to sleep better tonight.”