A former wrestler was sentenced to 30 years in prison for strangling his ex-girlfriend and dumping her half-naked body in the woods before kidnapping their toddler son.
Tyler Rios, 28, a 230-pound wrestler, admits strangling Yasemin Uyar, 24, to death in New Jersey in July with a wrestling maneuver that involved putting his arm across her throat until she died.
Rios left with their two-year-old son, Sebastian Rios, after killing Uyar at her Rahway home on July 8, and drove him to Tennessee with his mother’s body in the trunk.
When Sebastian did not show up for his daycare and Uyar did not show up for her planned work shift on July 9, the mother and son were reported missing from their Rahway home.
Sebastian was found uninjured with Rios the next day in Monterrey, Tennessee, and Uyar’s body was discovered in a nearby forested area a few hours later.
Uyar’s mother, Karen, informed Judge John M. Deitch at the court hearing that Sebastian, now three, claims he saw ‘Daddy choke Mommy,’ according to My Central Jersey.
Sebastian recalls what occurred and talks about his father murdering his mother almost every day, Karen said in court, adding that Rios had handed his kid “a lifetime of horrific memories.” Sebastian remembers his mother being chilly after his father strangled her, she said.
Rios pleaded guilty to aggravated manslaughter and desecrating human remains in April and was sentenced to 30 years in jail on Friday by the judge.
Rios, of East Orange, will complete 85 percent of his 25-year sentence on the manslaughter count before becoming eligible for release. He will then serve an extra five-year sentence on the second offense.
Sebastian would never be the same after the tragedy, Uyar’s mother remarked following the court hearing in Union County.
‘He’s a little boy. He shouldn’t have to deal with these things,’ Karen said.
‘As a parent you are supposed to love, cherish and protect your child. Instead, he repeatedly exposed Sebastian to hate, jealousy, violence and ultimately the death of his mother,’ Karen said.
Earlier, Karen described her youngest daughter as a ‘beautiful human’ who had a contagious laugh.
‘She was a beautiful human being both inside and out,’ she said as she sobbed.
Karen said her daughter tried to keep Sebastian safe by not telling Rios where she lived, but he was able to find her.
Rios admitted to being at Uyar’s apartment on July 8, 2021, when they had a disagreement concerning Sebastian’s whereabouts.
Rios, a former Highland Park High School wrestler, confesses to strangling Uyar to death with a wrestling maneuver.
He acknowledged to scooping up her body off the ground and placing it in a duffel bag, which he then placed in Uyar’s trunk.
Rios then traveled to Tennessee in his car, with his son at his side, and dumped Uyar’s body in a field.
Police were able to pinpoint Rios’ whereabouts to a Bethel Inn and Suites in Monterey, Tennessee, after he had the 45-minute phone chat with the person, who according to NJ.com was not named in the court records.
When the sheriff’s department arrived at the motel, they discovered Uyar’s car parked in the lot, with the license plate discarded nearby.
Rios’ debit card was in the room when the authorities took him into custody, according to court filings.
He then allegedly led authorities to the location of Uyar’s body, which was 2,300 feet away from the motel and near to a campground.
She was discovered in a duffel bag, half-naked.
Strangulation and blunt force trauma were the causes of death, according to an autopsy.
Uyar and Sebastian were last seen together on July 8, one day before the two-year-old was placed under a nationwide Amber Alert.
On July 9, members of the Rahway Police Department conducted a welfare check at Uyar’s residence for her and her toddler son, but found no one inside.
On the night of Uyar’s disappearance, a witness said he saw Rios outside of her Rahway apartment at midnight.
According to the witness, he was barefoot and dressed in a white tank top and jean shorts, and appeared to be aggressively glaring at the house.
According to NJ.com, Uyar was in a new relationship at the time of her death.
It’s unclear what happened next, but police were able to track Rios down thanks to one of his phone calls.
Officers entered Rios’ hotel room in Tennessee at 3 a.m. on July 10 and arrested him.
Uyar and Rios started dating while she was a freshman and he was a senior at Highland Park High School in New Jersey, according to Uyar’s mother, Karen.
But, according to Karen, their relationship quickly became poisonous, with Rios allegedly abusing Uyar in recent years.
Rios was charged with aggravated assault and strangulation of a domestic violence victim, as well as theft, according to court documents acquired by DailyMail.com.
Rios agreed to a plea deal in February 2020, in which he was found guilty of domestic violence assault but the theft and strangulation charges were dropped.
The court determined ‘aggravating factors’ that Rios was at risk of committing ‘another offense,’ according to the document.
He was sentenced to 180 days in prison and three years on probation, along with anger management counseling.
The court further ordered him to have no contact with the victim, despite the fact that he had already been served with restraining orders by Family Court.
The victim was not named in the court filings, but the dates of the legal issues coincide with a Facebook post Karen wrote in 2019 in which she referred to Rios as a “alcoholic, abusive monster.”
Yasemin had ‘got connected’ with Rios many years before the post was made in 2019, according to Karen Uyar.
‘In his drunken rages, he choked my kid till she passed out. He snatched her car and fled, leaving her on the floor,’ Karen Uyar wrote.
Rios had “given her more black and blues than I can count” and had “constantly attacked on her self-esteem with verbal and emotional torture almost as much as the physical assault,” she said.
‘He would tell her she was insane and f**ked up, and when she begged for help, he would walk away and not help or respond to her for hours.’ Karen Uyar writes, ‘Telling her to ‘toughen up.’
After her baby was born, the worried grandma reported that her daughter suffered from post-partum depression, which included insomnia.
‘He’d depart for hours and not return her calls.’ Take the kid away from her and tell her she’s a bad mother. Tell her how ineffective and worthless she was. The way he treated her was awful. ‘However, I needed to leave him as HER CHOICE,’ Uyar added.
Karen went on to say that she was afraid of receiving phone calls informing her that her daughter was in the hospital or had died.
Rios’ criminal background, according to the concerned grandma, spanned several states at the time, including New York, New Jersey, Mississippi, and Georgia.
Yasemin ‘eventually had the fortitude to flee’ in August 2019, according to the grandma, after a ‘joint effort’ to get her and Sebastian into a hotel, where she spent two ‘terrifying days’ scared Rios would find her.
‘He was infuriated by this. He followed her around. They communicate through their phones, friends, and social media. Karen Uyar writes, ‘Any way he could find.’
Rios, who appears to be based in Phoenix, Arizona, apparently persuaded Yasemin to allow him visit their son at some point.
Rios was drinking and ‘degrading’ on ‘day one’ of Karen’s arrival in Arizona with the small boy, Karen wrote.
On October 22, 2019, about 8 p.m., she received an alarmed text from her daughter instructing her to ‘call 911’ and ‘provide address.’
Rios had supposedly been detained weeks previously for shooting a gun within municipal limits, and the grandmother was concerned that her daughter and grandchild were dead.
Karen Uyar claimed in a Facebook post that Rios finally allowed Yasemin leave the apartment more almost two hours after the call.
He allegedly chopped up all of Yasemin and Sebastian’s identifying documents, including Sebastian’s birth certificate, Yasemin’s bank cards and social security cards, and her driver’s license, before doing so.
‘I love you too much to let you go,’ Rios allegedly stated at the time, according to the grandma.
‘I need people to recognize this alcoholic, abusive monster for who he is,’ she continued.
Rios had been charged with assault and unlawful confinement, according to Karen’s screenshots from the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office inmate search database.
Rios recently broke into Yasemin’s home, according to Yasemin’s sister Marissa, who told NJ.com that police were contacted.
Yasemin had been ‘busy packing and trying to get herself together’ prior to her disappearance in order to relocate and get away from Rios once more.
‘Man, all I want is for him to release at least my nephew.’ ‘I mean, I want my sister to come home, but you know, something has to give.’ She told the news organization.