Westchester County District Attorney Miriam E. Rocah announced today that a Peekskill man was sentenced to 30 years to life in state prison for the 2022 stabbing murder of his stepfather and setting fire to his mother’s apartment the same day.
DA Rocah said: “This defendant murdered Edward Reeves in cold blood and then lit his own mother’s home on fire. Today’s sentence holds this defendant fully accountable for his violent and deadly actions.”
The defendant, Shane Gilleo, 32, was sentenced to 25 years to life in state prison for Murder in the Second Degree to run consecutively with an indeterminate term of five to 15 years for Arson in the Third Degree. Following a two-week trial, a jury on Aug. 7 found the defendant guilty of both felony charges.
At approximately 12:30 a.m. Sept. 14, 2022, the defendant stabbed the 48-year-old victim seven times in the arm, abdomen, thigh and chest with a knife in a parking lot outside his grandmother’s Peekskill apartment on North James Street. The defendant then fled the scene.
The victim was transported to Westchester Medical Center in Valhalla where he died from his injuries.
As detailed during the trial, the Peekskill Police Department recovered the knife used to kill the victim and the defendant’s cell phone at the scene.
The defendant was on federal supervised release from prison and subject to home confinement with an ankle monitor.
Eleven hours later, at approximately 11:30 a.m., the defendant barricaded himself inside his mother’s Peekskill apartment on Grant Avenue as Peekskill police surrounded the two-family residence in an attempt to get him to surrender.
The defendant set three separate fires inside the apartment before punching out the windows and jumping out of a second story window. The apartment was rendered uninhabitable.
Following their investigation with assistance from the Westchester County Department of Public Safety, the Peekskill Police Department arrested the defendant.
The case was before Judge Robert Prisco in Westchester County Court and prosecuted by Senior Assistant District Attorneys Rachel Ehrhardt and Kevin Jones of the Trials and Investigations Division, with assistance from Criminal Investigator James Ossipov, Senior Crime Analyst Patricia Reed, and Victim Witness Paralegal Jessica Martinez.
