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Dominick Parisi, seated, and his attorney, Scott Gross. T.E. McMORROW
Dominick Parisi, who has been confined to a wheelchair for many of his court appearances, was sentenced March 5 for his role in the brutal 2021 Christmas morning killing of a Southampton man- T. E. McMorrow
T. E. NcMorrow
T. E. McMorrow
T. E. McMorrow
T. E. McMorrow
Dominick Parisi was sentenced on Tuesday, March 4, to 15 years in state prison for his role in the brutal shotgun slaying of a Southampton man, Steven Byrnes, on Christmas morning 2021.
Parisi, 61, and a co-defendant, Dangelo Soto, 24, broke into Byrnes’s Roses Grove Road residence in the North Sea area searching for drugs and cash. Armed with shotguns, they repeatedly beat Byrnes before Soto pulled the trigger, the prosecution has said.
Soto has also pleaded guilty and will be sentenced in two weeks, with the expectation that he will serve 17 years total in prison.
Both men will be credited for the time they have already served. They have been in custody in county jail since being arrested in January 2022.
After serving his 15 years, Parisi will have to serve another five years on probation.
Parisi pleaded guilty on January 16, at which time he admitted under oath to the various elements of the manslaughter in the first degree charge, which is a B felony.
Before pronouncing sentence, Suffolk County Justice Karen Wilutis reviewed the allocution Paris had given when he pleaded guilty in January.
“Do you stand by everything you said January 16?” she asked Parisi, who was in a wheelchair as he has been for his recent court appearances. He paused, then said, “Yes.”
Prosecutor Maria Troulakis had, at one point, asked that Parisi be sentenced to 30 years in prison after Parisi spurned an earlier plea bargain deal that his attorney, Scott Gross, had negotiated.
Wilutis had warned Parisi that she would not be shy about sentencing if he went to trial and was found guilty, telling him that Gross had negotiated a good deal for him.
Before the sentence was pronounced, Gross asked the court to release the $2,680 Parisi had on his person when he was arrested “to his girlfriend, who is in court.”
Wilutis agreed to do so, then pronounced the sentence.
Gross asked that the state prison system be alerted to Parisi’s declining health and various medical maladies, and Wilutis agreed.
Just before Parisi was led away, Wilutis said to him, “Make better choices,” reminding him that this is the second time in his life that he has been convicted of manslaughter in the first degree. Parisi served 15 years after shooting a woman in the head at point blank range in an industrial park in Bohemia in 1987.
Then, as now, a more serious murder in the second degree charge he was facing was dismissed in return for the plea. In addition, the two charges of burglary in the first degree were also dismissed in January after Parisi’s guilty plea.
