A Long Island man was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison for murdering his girlfriend in her Mineola penthouse apartment in 2022 because she was about to leave him and relocate to Florida, prosecutors said Friday.
Mark Small, 57, was sentenced on Thursday after a jury convicted him in September of second-degree murder and criminal possession of a weapon in the death of Marivel Estevez, 39.
“Rather than letting her leave New York to start a new job in a new state, this defendant decided that if he couldn’t have her, no one could,” Nassau County District Attorney Anne Donnelly said in a statement.
According to police, the relationship was “going very bad” at the time, and Estevez had informed friends and family that she intended to end it with Small and find a new job in Tampa.
Estevez was murdered on the night of July 28, 2022, in her top-floor apartment at Allure Mineola apartments, where she also worked as a manager.
Prosecutors say Small, a “failed restauranteur” from Elmont, shot Estevez once in the arm and once in the head before fleeing in her car with her dog, Tuffy.
When an employee did not show up for work the next day, she called the police. Nassau County officers conducting a wellness check discovered her dead on her bed.
Tuffy inadvertently assisted police in tracking down Small: the dog escaped from him after the murder, and he was hit by a car while chasing it down the Long Island Expressway.
On August 2, officers found Small at North Shore University Hospital in Manhasset, where he was being treated for injuries sustained in the car crash. It is unclear what happened to Tuffy.
Investigators had already identified Small through security camera footage and the use of his entry fob at Allure Mineola, which is directly across the street from the Nassau County Court House and District Attorney’s Office.
