KENMORE, N.Y. — Twenty-one years ago, a Kenmore West High School graduate was murdered in Las Vegas.
Salvatore Zendano moved to Nevada when he was twenty-three years old. He accepted a bartending position at O'Aces Bar on Rainbow Boulevard.
"He wanted to do something different, see what the West Coast was like," said sister Laurie Glosek.
In May of 1998, two armed men entered the bar around 3 am attempting to rob it. "They entered the bar like gangbusters guns in the air, everybody down," said Glosek.
"Everybody was on the floor and they grabbed a waitress off the ground and tried to get her to open the register because she was nervous and couldn't do it," she said, "they started pistol whipping her and my brother, that's when he got up."
Glosek says Zendano went to help the distressed waitress. "... he closed his eyes and just started spraying killing my brother with five bullets," said Glosek.
Nevada authorities arrested 17-year-old Kenshawn Maxey. He killed two people that night, Salvatore and Maxey's friend Lashawn Levi.
Maxey was sentenced to life without parole in 2000.
"I was thrilled that this could just be behind us," she said."...not having to worry about having him walking the streets ever again, hurting somebody else again and we thought that was the case."
This week, Glosek received a letter in the mail from the Nevada Board of Pardons.
"When I saw that he was up for a pardon I had to read it a couple of times," she said, "because how does somebody go from a sentence of life without the possibility of parole to now living with, we are going to pardon you possibly?"
Glosek said she contacted a District Attorney in Nevada who said Maxey qualifies for the pardon because he was a juvenile when he committed the crime.
The case will go before the Nevada Board of Pardons. The board can recommend a full pardon, a commuted sentence or leave the sentence the way it is.
It will ultimately be the Governor of Nevada's decision. One thousand convicts apply for pardons each year and this case was one of four selected for review.
The family is sending letters and emotional pleas to the board and the Governor.
" I just don't think that right now he should walk the same earth and breath the same air that my brother is not allowed to walk and breathe," she said.