A man who briefly played on Rutgers University’s basketball team has been sentenced to 22 years in prison after he pleaded guilty to killing a 19-year-old brothel worker he mistook for a different woman.
Logan Kelley, 28, pleaded guilty to killing Isis Atalia Montoya Romero in a Tijuana nightclub back in February 2021, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported. Surveillance footage reportedly shows Kelley walking up behind Montoya and slit her throat, running away as she fell to the ground.
Kelley reportedly believed Montoya was a different woman he had met at the club, and used a 4-inch clip-point blade with a military seal on the handle to kill her, leading police to initially believe he was a member of the U.S. military, which he was not. Montoya had been speaking with a man in the hallway of a motel next to the Adelita nightclub, which describes itself as the “most traditional and famous men’s club in Tijuana in operation since 1962.”
Kelley was initially charged with femicide, a hate crime in Mexico that would have carried a minimum sentence of 40 years in prison had the case gone to trial. Since Kelley pleaded guilty, he received a deal to spend 22 years in prison and pay $40,000 in restitution to Montoya’s family, which includes her 4-year-old son.
Montoya’s father was outraged at the sentence, NJ.com reported.
“I wanted justice, but justice was not served in this whole process,” José Montoya told the outlet. “The judge, the prosecutor, even my daughter’s attorney all acted in favor of [Kelley] and not for her. I am very frustrated by all the corruption and the deception,”
“There is video of what this assassin did to my daughter. He practically decapitated her! It seems like the judge didn’t even see the video,” he added.
Kelley grew up in Mountainside, New Jersey and was a star basketball player in high school, leading the state in scoring in 2012 as a senior at Governor Livingston High School in Berkeley Heights, New Jersey. He became a walk-on member of the Rutgers teams and was provided a scholarship for the 2013-2014 season, NJ.com reported. He never used the scholarship.
Kelley only played in three games as a freshman at Rutgers and was removed from the team at the end of that season for some unknown reason, Border Report revealed.