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Background: Guy Mustgray II (WHAM/YouTube). Inset: Michael DiCesare (GoFundMe).
A New York man is headed to prison for his role in a nearly 20-minute long beating on Christmas morning in 2023 that led to a man’s death.
Guy Mustgray II, 34, was sentenced to 20 years in prison after pleading guilty to manslaughter in the death of Michael DiCesare. Mustgray is the second defendant to be sentenced in DiCesare’s death. In December, Brucewayne Beamon received a 25-year prison sentence after he pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter, the Monroe County Prosecutor’s Office said.
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Prosecutors said Rochester police officers responded on Dec. 25, 2023, to the corner of Bay Street and Portland Avenue where they found the 50-year-old DiCesare suffering from serious injuries. Paramedics rushed him to the hospital but he died on Feb. 4, 2024. A subsequent investigation determined Beamon and Mustgray robbed him and then beat him for about 18 minutes.
Assistant District Attorney Aliyah Fowler described the beating — which was caught on video — to local ABC affiliate WHAM.
“The 18 minutes kind of consisted of both defendants coming into contact with Michael that morning,” Fowler said. “It started out physical with just fists, and then later the box cutter that was kind of alluded to in court was used, where his face was slashed and he was stomped on. They left, they came back, they left and came back and continued over that 18-minute period — and ultimately ended with a trash can being dumped over his body while he was bleeding out on the sidewalk on Christmas morning.”
DiCesare’s sister Julie Arellano wrote in a letter to the judge before sentencing about the callousness of the beating and its aftermath. WHAM posted a copy of the letter.
“Mustgray left Mike, lifeless, under a pile of trash on the side of a freezing cold street on Christmas morning and did nothing to help him,” she wrote. “This mental picture will haunt my thoughts for the rest of my life.”
The victim’s family couldn’t get ahold of him so instead of celebrating Christmas, they spent the day looking for him. Two days later they learned he was listed under a “John Doe” in the neuro-intensive care unit.
Arellano described her brother who was four years her elder as “funny, lighthearted, giving, enthusiastic and caring.” He was a professional chef and owned restaurants, she said.
For his family, things will never be the same.
“The holiday season, which was once a time of joy for us through our entire lives, is now marked by grief, the memory of the shock of what Mike endured, imagining his pain and fear, this has left us all sick to our stomachs and in complete heartbreak,” Arellano wrote. “We are left with haunting images of the brutal way in which he was taken from us.”
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