NEW YORK (1010 WINS) -- A man who killed his ex-girlfriend, tossed her body in the garbage and left her 4-year-old daughter wandering the streets of New York was sentenced Wednesday to 32 years in prison.
Cesar Ascarrunz, 32, pleaded guilty last month to manslaughter and reckless endangerment, admitting he killed Monica Lozada-Rivadineira and left her daughter, Valery Belen Saavedra Lozada, barefoot and alone in the middle of the night in the Middle Village section of Queens.
State Supreme Court Justice Robert J. Hanophy sentenced Ascarrunz to 25 years in prison on the manslaughter charge, plus an additional two to seven years on the endangerment charge involving the little girl.
A murder verdict could have carried a life sentence.
Queens District Attorney Richard Brown said in a statement that the sentencing brings ``finality to a case that captured the attention of people all across the country.''
He said accepting a guilty plea spares Valery ``the emotional trauma of having to testify about the events surrounding her abandonment and the death of her mother.''
The killing of Lozada-Rivadineira, 26, captured the city's attention. After child welfare workers found Valery on the street, they put the little girl on television in an attempt to track down her family. The chubby-cheeked child innocently described her mother as looking ``like a princess.''
Investigators later found the woman's body in a Pennsylvania landfill.
The little girl, Valery, is living with maternal relatives.
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