Ruben Rodriguez walked into the Robert N. Daveron Complex (RNDC), the main adolescent house on Rikers Island, in a faded stone-colored jumpsuit on April 25. A number of inmates whom he recognized from his previous sentence, bristled with fear, but also showed respect and pity when Ruben said he was back on murder charges.
Ruben was one of two teenagers accused of fatally assaulting 28-year-old Luis Melendez with wooden poles, leaving him bleeding with injuries to his head, face and torso. The Bronx district attorney charged Ruben with murder in the second degree plus two lesser charges. Ruben was held without bail, which is standard for homicide cases in the Bronx, said Ruben’s defense attorney Arlen Yalkut.
Ruben was used to seeing people he knew wherever he was locked up — a shifting group of teen boys who primarily came from the south Bronx and the eastern fringes of Brooklyn. They aged together, in a way, like kids who overlapped sessions at a bloodthirsty summer camp, where homemade blades always came out during color wars.
[For more of this story, written by Theresa Fisher, go to http://jjie.org/the-novel-feeling-of-regret/107908/]
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