Gunman who fatally shot co-worker of girlfriend's father at Bethpage hotel gets 23 years to life in prison

A gunman who traveled three hours from Pennsylvania to fatally shoot a Florida father of six outside a Bethpage hotel was sentenced Wednesday in Nassau County Court to 23 years to life in prison.

Sgroilin Santana, 23, of Tamaqua, Pennsylvania, pleaded guilty on Sept. 15 to second-degree murder, attempted murder and gun charges for killing Jorge Vazquez, 35, a traveling metal worker living at the Extended Stay America on South Oyster Bay Road, around 9:30 p.m. on April 2, 2025.

Alexander Garcia, the father of Santana’s girlfriend, Jaslyn Garcia, called his daughter after getting into a physical altercation with Vazquez at the job site where they both worked and told her to bring her boyfriend and his gun to the Bethpage hotel, according to court papers.

"Everyone is going to get clapped," Jaslyn Garcia allegedly texted her mother, according to a police interview. She told police that she sold some food stamps to pay for the gas.

The couple drove more than three hours with a loaded gun, prosecutors said, stopping in Brooklyn to pick up another alleged co-conspirator, on a mission to avenge the beating that Alexander Garcia had taken.

The father texted his daughter to instruct Santana to "put one in the head."

They entered the hotel parking lot where Santana shot Vazquez five times in the stomach and fired twice on another person nearby, but missed, according to police.

The crew fled back to Pennsylvania in the Sprinter van that Jaslyn Garcia had driven to New York, tossing the gun out the window on the way, authorities said.

Nassau County investigators identified the suspects using video surveillance camera footage. They traced them back to Tamaqua in Pennsylvania, where they were arrested on April 30 and extradited to Nassau County.

On May 12, Jaslyn Garcia gave a videotaped confession in which she said that her boyfriend shot and killed Vazquez and she drove the getaway vehicle, according to court records.

At the sentencing on Wednesday, Nassau County prosecutor Tracy Keeton called the murder a "cold-blooded, heartless and completely thoughtless crime."

Supreme Court Justice Robert Bogle noted that Santana had hours during the drive to think about what he was about to do and reconsider.

"This could have ended in a small fistfight, it could have been resolved in small claims court," the judge said. "You had plenty of time to consider the deadly choice of murder."

Santana said nothing about the crime during his sentencing, but his defense attorney Joseph Lo Piccolo said his client felt sorry for what he did.

"He’s shown remorse to me and sought to resolve this case without putting the family through further struggle of a trial," the attorney said. "He can’t undo what he did and he will serve the time for it."

Vazquez’s sisters wept in the courtroom throughout the proceeding.

Irina Sanchez, his oldest sister, recalled her brother as a hard-working homebody and an oversized kid at heart, who loved his six children.

"They have no heart," she said about Santana and the Garcia crew. "You can’t fight. You can’t talk it out? You decide to pull up and shoot somebody without realizing that you’re not just affecting your life? This is a sad case because two families got destroyed. I feel sorry for him because he’s still a boy."