A mother has come forward claiming her city-worker son confessed to being the masked gunman who killed a Bronx mom through her apartment peephole in 2018.
The woman, whose name has not been released, told private investigator Manuel Gomez that her son — now an employee with the city’s Administration of Children’s Services — admitted to the shooting during a conversation in her car in 2022. The killing of Wendy Martinez, 45, has remained unsolved for nearly seven years, with no charges ever filed.
“He said, ‘You know I know who did that, right?'” the mother said in a recorded interview obtained by The Post. She said she then pressed him directly about his involvement in the homicide.
“I said, ‘Are you kidding me? Did you have any involvement in that?’ And he said, ‘Yeah,'” she continued. The mother said her son initially denied participation when she begged him to, then “laughed and smirked at her” before admitting the truth.
The alleged confession provides a potential breakthrough in the case of Martinez, a hospital worker who was gunned down through her peephole on Nov. 24, 2018, in her Concourse Village apartment. She had been home with her then-11-year-old son when the doorbell rang. After receiving no answer to her first “who is it,” she asked again and slid open the peephole, where a masked gunman fired a single fatal shot through the viewing slot into her face.
Police sources said at the time that Martinez was not the intended target. Detectives believed the shooter was targeting her son Brian Solano, now 33, in retaliation for Solano’s alleged killing of 21-year-old Willie Lora inside Lora’s nearby Bronx apartment in December 2014. Solano, identified by police sources as a Trinitarios gang member, served eight years in prison on a manslaughter conviction stemming from Lora’s death before being released on parole earlier this year.
The mother told Gomez that she recognized her son immediately when she reviewed surveillance footage from the night of Martinez’s killing. The video showed a masked man leaving Martinez’s building carrying an open umbrella to shield his identity.
“I recognized him. I recognized his build, his body, his walk, his run, everything. His whole persona — I know that person,” she said on the recording, before adding with emphasis, “I’m his mother.”
The umbrella, which was ditched at the scene, is believed to contain DNA evidence that could potentially identify the shooter. Police sources had also said at the time of the killing that Martinez’s apartment had been targeted by The Eden Boys, a Bloods offshoot and rival to the Trinitarios.
The alleged gunman’s mother has not gone to police with her son’s purported confession, though detectives are expected to speak with her soon. The son has an existing criminal history, according to the report.
No one has been charged with Martinez’s murder, and the Bronx District Attorney’s Office did not immediately return request for comment on the new development.