By Alex Robinson
A former Flushing resident was sentenced to 25 years to life last week for the 1995 slaying of a 21-year-old man, Queens District Attorney Richard Brown said.
Judge Barry Schwartz handed down the sentence to Andrew Caballero, 39, in Queens Criminal Court after he was found guilty of the gruesome murder of Jason Kollman, of East Flushing.
Kollmann was stabbed 15 times and dragged across the roof of an apartment building, at 43-43 Kissena Blvd., before he was thrown onto a fifth-story fire escape and left to die Feb. 1, 1995.
The case remained unsolved for years until new testimony by two witnesses led the NYPD’s cold case squad to Caballero, who they then charged with second-degree murder in 2012.
The jury found Caballero guilty after two days of deliberating following a two-week trial at the beginning of August in Queens Criminal Court.
“The residents of Queens County can feel secure knowing that these two violent predators are off the streets and behind bars,” Brown said of Caballero’s sentence and another unrelated homicide sentence given out on the same day. “The sentences meted out by the court speak loudly and in unison about society’s abhorrence for the senseless and deliberate killing of other human beings.”
Nadia Sierra, who lived in the building with Caballero at the time, and Oscar Balarezo, a friend, testified they saw the defendant coming out of the building’s elevator soaked with blood shortly after he reportedly got into an altercation with Kollmann.
Prosecutors said Caballero had lived with Sierra in the Kissena Boulevard building for a few more weeks after Kollmann’s death before she begged him to leave. He allegedly admitted to her he killed Kollmann because he wanted to know what it felt like to kill somebody, prosecutors said.
Reach reporter Alex Robinson by e-mail at arobinson@cnglocal.com or by phone at 718-260-4566.
