QUEENS — A Kew Gardens man who accidentally shot his girlfriend in the head in 2014, leaving her with massive brain damage, was sentenced to 12 years in prison last week, the Queens District Attorney’s office said.
Steven Diaz, 33, who lived on 127th Street near Kew Gardens Road, initially claimed that his girlfriend, Amanda Rivera, 25, was shot during a home invasion on Feb. 9, 2014, prosecutors said.
But it later turned out that it was Diaz who shot her accidentally with a 9mm handgun inside their third-floor apartment.
He took her to a local hospital and later told investigators that he was a drug dealer and that three masked robbers had broken in to steal his stash of marijuana. He also told police that one of the intruders shot Rivera in the head.
Later Diaz admitted that he misled police, and he'd tossed the gun into the sewer on the way to the hospital.
Investigators were not able to recover the gun, but they found more than 50 pounds of marijuana at Diaz’s apartment, prosecutors said.
Rivera, according to the DA’s office, is “residing in a nursing home, has permanent brain damage and cannot speak or communicate in any way.”
Diaz, who has been held in jail since his arrest in February 2014, was convicted last month of criminal possession of a weapon, criminal possession of marijuana and tampering with evidence, the DA's office said.
