Middlesex DA announces suspect in 2015 Everett homicide

Murder victim Ashlee Berryman and her 3-year-old son in an undated photo. (Courtesy / Middlesex DA)

Prosecutors believe they have solved the 2015 shooting murder of 21-year-old Ashlee Berryman, who was killed in a “hail of gunfire” outside an Everett nightclub.

“Ashlee Berryman, known to those who loved her as ‘Penny,’ was a completely innocent victim who was caught in a hail of gunfire. Those actions ripped her from her then-3-year-old son, as well as her other family and friends,” Middlesex DA Marian Ryan said at a Friday afternoon press conference.

“Her family has waited over eight years for the answers as to what happened and the community of Everett — left shaken and afraid by the fact that this took place in a very public place — now knows the circumstances of what took place as a result of the work done in this case,” the DA added.

A Middlesex County grand jury on Friday morning indicted Henry “J.R.” Del-Rio, 27, on charges of murder, assault and battery by means of a dangerous weapon-firearm, attempt to commit assault and battery by means of a dangerous weapon-firearm, possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony and carrying a firearm, a charge elevated by being a subsequent offense.

Del-Rio is currently in federal custody since December of 2022 in a separate case, Ryan said, and he will be arraigned on the county charges when he is brought there.

A search of federal court records shows that a man with the same name, of the same age and admittedly of the same gang pleaded guilty in federal court in Boston on June 12, 2018, to four charges: Conspiracy to conduct enterprise affairs through racketeering activity, conspiracy to distribute crack and cocaine, conspiracy to distribute heroin and possession of a firearm with an obliterated serial number. He was sentenced to five years in prison to be followed by four years of supervised release — though that release is subject to revocation, which will be argued Jan. 31 at 10 a.m.

Ryan said that Del-Rio, a known member of the Chelsea “East Side Money Gang,” had gone to the Braza Grille nightclub in Everett, where a concert had taken place the night of Aug. 12, 2015. In the early morning hours of Aug. 13, the concert-goers and performers were gathered in the parking lot, which included Del-Rio and “a group of his acquaintances, many of whom like him, were allegedly associated” with the gang.

A little before 1 a.m., Ryan, said, two men showed up in the parking lot and got into some kind of verbal argument with one of the Money Gang members. When that argument ended, Ryan alleges that Del-Rio drew a .40-caliber pistol and fired nine times into the crowd.

While he did hit one of the two men he targeted in the feet and ankles as he fled — and still more lodged in a municipal street sign, smashed through the front window of the Rite-Aid across the street and hit a passing car — another of the bullets struck Berryman in the back, fatally wounding her.

Berryman had been at the concert to support her boyfriend, who had been one of the performers. Her sister, Alx Berryman, told the Herald following the tragedy that the Malden mother — who had grown up in Lynn — doted on her 3-year-old son, “Juju.” She took him fishing and to play in the spray pool on Boston Common’s Frog Pond in the summers.

“Compounding that tragedy, over the years there was an intentional effort on the part of some witnesses to withhold the truth and to conceal the identity of the shooter,” Ryan said. “I established Middlesex’s Cold Case Unit in 2019 to deliver concrete results. Today’s charges are yet another example of how this Unit is ensuring that those who commit violent acts in this County understand that the mere passage of time will do nothing to affect our resolve in pursuing them.”

Ryan used this investigative win to promote her bill “An Act relative to the reckless discharge of firearms” in the Massachusetts Legislature.

A statement released after the press briefing states that “the Commonwealth laws fall short where one or more people fire a weapon without regard for the safety of those who are close by, and who are put at risk by the reckless or highly dangerous use of deadly force. The bill provides a new felony offense that would punish a shooter who acts ‘without regard for the risk of serious bodily injury to another.’”