Mother of victim in triple slaying to attend trial

Investigators comb a Central Islip house where three bodies were found by crew responding to a fire. (Aug. 11, 2009) Credit: James Carbone
A marble urn containing the ashes of 19-year-old Louis Calixto Jr. will sit next to his mother in court each day, she said, as she watches the trial of those charged with her son's murder.
Calixto's mother, Yolanda de Jesus, said Monday that she plans to do this, "To show them this is what they did. This is all I have left."
The urn normally rests in a shrine-like area in the living room in her Central Islip home, adorned with photographs of the teenager.
Calixto was one of three victims who in August were tortured, shot to death and then burned in a Central Islip house in a fire set to cover up the evidence, police said.
Calixto was working toward becoming an auto mechanic like his father, Louis Calixto Sr., de Jesus said.
He was going into his third semester at the New York Automotive and Diesel Institute, a mechanics school in Queens. "He had a 4.0 average," she said.
The day Calixto was killed, he left their home on Ackerman Street and went by a house on Hickory Street where a friend, Mykier Daniels, 28, was going to give him a ride to school, de Jesus said.
Calixto, Daniels, and Daniels' sister were found dead in the home.
The family had little news about the investigation until Monday when Natalie Calixto, 16, his sister, saw an article about the indictments of two men on charges of murder and arson.
"If I could," de Jesus said, "I'd put them in a room for the rest of their lives with nothing to see but the pictures of the people they killed."