A 20-year sentence ended the prosecution, but relatives said it could not repair the family shattered inside a Perth Amboy home.
PERTH AMBOY, N.J. — When relatives addressed the court before Wellington Leonardo was sentenced for killing his wife, they focused less on the number of years he might serve than on the years Rosanna Rodriguez’s four daughters must live without their mother.
One of Rodriguez’s sisters said the girls would now visit their mother’s grave instead of hearing her voice. Another said they would grieve her for longer than they had been able to know her. Their statements framed the July sentencing as the end of a prosecution but not the end of the case’s consequences. Leonardo, 47, received 20 years in prison after a jury convicted him of passion-provocation manslaughter, weapons offenses and child endangerment. Jurors had rejected a murder charge in Rodriguez’s fatal stabbing.
The four daughters were 13, 11, 3 and 11 months old when Rodriguez was killed in the family’s Perth Amboy home on Sept. 21, 2024. Their ages meant the loss reached across several stages of childhood. The oldest was old enough to understand the emergency and call police. The youngest was still an infant. In court, the children were represented not through public statements of their own but through evidence of what they experienced and through relatives who described the future they had lost.
Rodriguez was remembered by her family as a compassionate, caring woman and a devoted mother. An obituary said she was born in the Dominican Republic and later made her life in Perth Amboy, where she worked as an apartment inspector. Family fundraising material sought help with funeral expenses and the children’s care. Mayor Helmin Caba described her death as heartbreaking and said the city stood with her loved ones. Residents attended a vigil, creating a public space to remember Rodriguez apart from the allegations against her husband.
Those memorial accounts supplied a fuller picture than the early charging documents, which necessarily centered on a crime scene, a suspect and alleged offenses. Official records initially identified the victim as Rosana Rodriguez, 40, while family materials and later court reports generally called her Rosanna and described her as 39, with her 40th birthday approaching. Reports also varied between Wellinton and Wellington Leonardo. The spelling and age differences remain in the public record, but the family and court accounts refer to the same couple and the same fatal incident.
The violence unfolded before dawn in the kitchen of the home on Bertrand Avenue. According to court reporting, the oldest daughter awoke at about 3 a.m. when she heard Rodriguez screaming. The girl entered the kitchen, saw the attack and was told by her mother to call 911. Her statement to the dispatcher — “My dad is trying to stab my mom” — became the most widely reported line from the case. The call later was played in court, requiring the family’s private emergency to be heard as evidence in a public criminal proceeding.
The dispatcher instructed the girl to take her sisters into a room, lock the door and signal through a window when officers arrived. Reports said the teenager tried to interrupt the attack by throwing a bag at Leonardo before gathering the other children in their mother’s bedroom. Her actions connected the homicide to the later child-endangerment convictions. She was not simply a witness who happened to be present. She sought help, attempted to protect her mother and became responsible for moving three younger children away from immediate danger.
When Perth Amboy police entered the home, they found Rodriguez and Leonardo on the kitchen floor. Rodriguez was transported to Hackensack Meridian Health Raritan Bay Medical Center, where she was pronounced dead. Leonardo was taken to Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital for treatment. Authorities later charged him with murder, weapons offenses and endangering the welfare of a child. The initial accusation began a court process that would take about a year and a half to reach a jury verdict.
At an early detention hearing, prosecutors said Rodriguez had told Leonardo that she wanted to end their marriage. Assistant Prosecutor Brian Shevlin urged the judge to keep Leonardo jailed. Defense attorney Daniel Gonzalez said injuries on Leonardo’s hands and arms could support self-defense. Prosecutors contested that interpretation and relied on the evidence concerning Rodriguez’s wounds. The judge ordered Leonardo held while the case proceeded, but the defense continued to have the right to challenge the state’s account at trial.
Jurors did not accept the murder charge when the trial concluded in March 2026. They instead convicted Leonardo of passion-provocation manslaughter. The lesser verdict meant the jury found him responsible for unlawfully killing Rodriguez but did not find the state had proved murder under the legal instructions governing the case. The jury also returned guilty verdicts on weapons charges and counts involving the children. Those additional convictions ensured that the daughters’ exposure to the violence remained part of the formal judgment rather than only part of the case’s emotional background.
At the sentencing hearing, Leonardo said he regretted the killing and missed Rodriguez. He said he wished he could return to the past and change what had happened. Rodriguez’s sisters told the court they did not believe he had shown genuine remorse. Their statements emphasized that regret expressed after a conviction could not restore a mother to her children or remove the memory of the attack from the daughter who called police. The hearing placed Leonardo’s words beside the losses described by the victim’s family and left the judge to determine the punishment.
Middlesex County Superior Court Judge Andrea Carter imposed the 20-year term. Reports said Leonardo will have to serve 85% of the sentence before he is eligible for parole. That requirement would keep him imprisoned for about 17 years before he could be considered, though eligibility would not assure release. Carter also said Leonardo could not contact his daughters unless they chose to see him. The condition gives the children authority over contact with the surviving parent whose conviction arose from their mother’s death.
The no-contact provision is one of the few parts of the sentence directed toward the daughters’ future rather than Leonardo’s punishment. It does not settle who will care for them, how the family will manage their grief or whether the oldest daughter will ever choose to speak with her father. Those details have not been publicly released, and the children’s privacy limits what responsible reporting can establish. The court’s condition simply prevents Leonardo from initiating a relationship they do not want while leaving open the possibility that they may make a different choice later.
The criminal process transformed family experiences into legal categories. Rodriguez became the named victim in a homicide prosecution. The oldest daughter’s attempt to summon help became trial evidence. The presence of the four children became the foundation for endangerment charges. The marital conflict became part of the prosecution’s account of what preceded the attack. The jury then sorted that evidence through instructions defining murder, manslaughter and the related offenses. Each step was necessary to decide legal responsibility, but none could fully describe the family life that ended that morning.
The public attention surrounding the case also changed over time. The first reports concentrated on the police response, Leonardo’s hospitalization and the murder charge. The detention hearing introduced the 911 recording and competing arguments about self-defense. The trial produced a verdict different from the charge initially filed. The sentencing returned attention to Rodriguez’s relatives and the daughters. Seen together, those stages show how the center of a criminal case can move from an alleged offender to disputed evidence and, finally, back to those who must live with the result.
Leonardo is now subject to the sentence and any later parole review permitted by law. No publicly reported proceeding can restore Rodriguez’s role in her daughters’ lives. Her relatives’ statements made that point by measuring the loss in ordinary experiences: hearing a mother’s voice, growing up with her guidance and spending years with her instead of grieving her. The prison term closes the trial-level case, while the family’s account makes clear that the most enduring sentence belongs to four children who were never defendants in the courtroom.
Author note: Last updated Aug. 4, 2026.