CAMBRIDGE, MASS. (WHDH) - A Boston man pleaded guilty last week to a manslaughter charge in connection with the death of a 15-year-old Cambridge girl.
A judge sentenced Isaias Plaza, 19, to 2.5 years in the House of Correction with two years to serve and the balance of his sentence suspended for five years, Middlesex District Attorney Marian Ryan and Cambridge Police Commissioner Branville Bard Jr. announced Thursday.
Upon release, Plaza is ordered to undergo a mental health evaluation and submit to follow up treatment, to undergo a substance abuse evaluation and submit to follow up treatment, to not use drugs, to submit to random screens, and to seek and maintain employment or continue education, Ryan and Bard continued.
Officers responding to a report of a female who had been shoved to the ground on Cambridge Street in Cambridge around 6:30 p.m. on July 22, 2018 found 15-year-old Richelle Robinson unresponsive and bleeding.
She was transported to Massachusetts General Hospital, where she was pronounced dead the next day.
The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner later ruled the cause of death to be blunt force trauma.
An investigation revealed that Richelle was walking to a friend’s house at the time of the apparent assault.
Witnesses reportedly told authorities that they saw a man, later identified as Plaza, leaving the scene of the assault on a bicycle wearing jeans and black sneakers with white soles.
Plaza allegedly burned the clothes described by witnesses in an effort to avoid being connected to Richelle’s death.
Investigators subsequently learned that Richelle and Plaza were known to each other and had previously shared a group of friends, Ryan and Bard said.
Authorities discovered that they reportedly had a falling out with the victim and other members of their circle of friends in the weeks prior to this incident.
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