image description — Family members of the Pascual-Polanco brothers gather outside of Berkshire Superior on Thursday to speak to media after the two men were sentenced to life in prison.

Pascual-Polanco Brothers Sentenced to Life for 2019 Homicide

By Brittany PolitoiBerkshires Staff
02:23PM / Thursday, October 06, 2022Print Story | Email Story

PITTSFIELD, Mass. — Chiry Omar Pascual-Polanco and Carlos Pascual-Polanco on Thursday were given life sentences without possibility for parole for the murder of 18-year-old Jaden Salois in 2019.

The brothers lured Salois, of Dalton, outside a Pittsfield home for a false drug deal and shot him in the back in the early morning hours on Jan. 20, 2019. Prosecutors say the killing was over allegations of stolen marijuana.

During the sentencing at Berkshire Superior Court, several of Salios' family members gave impact statements that detailed his kind disposition and hopes for the future. They said it was unfair for him to be robbed of it.

"A piece of me is gone that will never be replaced," his mother Megan Bernardini wrote.

"Over the past 3 1/2 years, me and my family have experienced endless sleepless nights and have had never-ending thoughts of why this happened to Jaden and why this happened to us," his cousin Brianna Crucitti said. "We still don't know why it happened to him or why it happened to us."

Family members of Chiry Omar, 26, and Carlos, 22, called the verdict is an injustice, arguing that there was not sufficient provable evidence and that the brothers are innocent.

They did not speak at the sentencing but offered statements to iBerkshires afterward.

Sister Marisela Pascual knew that she and her brothers had "no fighting chance" for their lives in this community and said it is clear that they didn’t commit the crime.

"That didn't matter to the jury who made the deliberations in under six hours," Pascual added. "Obvious to say, they had their minds made up."

Their mother Maribel Polanco said the verdict is a "big injustice" and racism against her children, arguing that it was decided on because they have a Hispanic last name.

Cousin Elina Estrella said the case showed a lot of circumstantial evidence that was not concrete and pointed to a lack of diversity on the jury. She believes that if Salois was a person of color and her cousins were white, it "would have been a different story."

Last month, the brothers were found guilty of murder in the first degree by a Berkshire Superior Court jury following a two-week trial that saw the prosecution call 30 witnesses. They were also found guilty on two counts of possession of a firearm without a firearm identification card, two counts of possession of ammunition without an FID, and possession of marijuana with intent to distribute.

The two were sentenced to life without the possibility of parole in the Massachusetts Correctional Institute at Cedar Junction in South Walpole.

The other counts carry a sentence of two years in the Berkshire County House of Corrections and one carries a sentence of five years in the state correctional facility.

A third co-defendant, Dasean Smith, 24, of Pittsfield, is also charged with murder and will be tried separately.

"I send my condolences to Jaden's loved ones, and I admire their courage in delivering their powerful victim impact statements to the court. Jaden is gone but lives on in the hearts of those who loved him, and I hope this measure of accountability supports his family," District Attorney Andrea Harrington said.

"I thank the Pittsfield Police Department and the Massachusetts State Police for their investigation into this senseless homicide, and I am proud of the trial team for their presentation of the facts to the jury."

Salois' grandmother said he had gotten in with the wrong crowd and that his family always hoped that he would realize that this life wasn't going to work out for him. She said they spent a lot of time talking on the phone about how to improve his circumstances prior to his death.

"He had hopes and dreams like we all do. A future life with marriage and children. He knew we wanted to be a dad," Salois' other grandmother said.

"He knew he wanted to have God in his life and I would take him to every church in the city until he found one that he felt comfortable with. He never had a chance to do that because time ran out for him."

Tags: murder,

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PCTV Turns 40, Anniversary Celebration This Friday

By Breanna SteeleiBekshires Staff
03:30PM / Monday, September 14, 2026

PITTSFIELD, Mass. — Pittsfield Community Television is turning 40 this week, and it's celebrating with its viewers and listeners.

This Friday, Sept. 18, PCTV will celebrate at the Berkshire Hills Country Club. Ryan Peterson, WTEN News10 ABC anchor and Pittsfield High School graduate, will give the keynote address.

Executive Director Shawn Serre, who has been with the station for over 32 years, said it's their chance to celebrate all they have been able to bring to the community.

"It's a chance to reflect on everything that the organization has done over those years, all the people that have been involved. From board members to volunteers to producers to crew people to staff members, and all the different programs that we've produced," he said. "Everything from public programming to education, sports, graduations, parades, government meetings and forums, and election night coverage, and all kinds of other things that just year upon year of history that we've been able to create and document here for the Pittsfield community over those years."

Serre took over as executive director about nine years ago. Originally a volunteer fresh out of college.

The original board included former mayor Edward Reilly, Dan Dillon, Diane Morgenstern, Bernard Avalle, and John Fukes of the Berkshire Athenaeum. The operation was all-volunteer until PCTV hired the first executive director in January 1989.

PCTV has operated out of its station on Federico Drive since 1999. But originally they worked out of a basement.

"The first location that we ever had, we had all of our equipment stored in cardboard boxes in the basement of the Berkshire Athenaeum, because the Berkshire Athenaeum at the time was very gracious and allowed us to have some space while we sort of got our feet on the ground and sort of got things organized," he said. "But we had no location. We had no studio. We just had this equipment that was ordered with the money that we had from the original cable franchise grant."

"So that lasted a couple of years, and then we signed and got a lease over in our first studio location, which was over on Fourth Street in Pittsfield," Serre continued. "That was around the time that I first got involved, just before we moved to Fourth Street. So I was there in the basement of the library, opening those boxes up and seeing what we had for equipment. So we stayed there at Fourth Street for about 10 years, and then this building that we're currently in now, over on Federico Drive, was constructed in 1998. It was built kind of custom-made for the cable company and for us and for one other company."

Serre said one of their proudest moments was saving the radio station WTBR-FM back in 2018. PCTV made space for them so they could continue operation.

"We carved out some space here in our facility for that, and we've been operating that radio station ever since. So those are some of the big milestones of growth of the organization over the years, and the things that we've done," he said.

They have also invested in advanced technology to keep their programming accessible to all.

"Technologically, there's another whole series of things that we've gone through," he said. "We've started out with a single cable TV channel. We grew to three cable TV channels. We started out as standard definition on videotape, and we grew to digital, and then to high definition, and then everything went to the internet. So we're able to offer video on demand and live streams and video on social media. And then with the radio station, we also have a live stream there and podcasting. So we've seen a lot of technological change and tried to roll with that over the years."

Serre said that PCTV strives to keep people informed while also allowing space for people to create their own media.

"The whole idea behind PEG [Public Education and Government Access]...the whole idea behind that back in the 70s and 80s was that people could be left behind with the technology that's available to the big corporations," he said. "So, if you had a cable system at the time, ordinary people maybe they had camcorders at home, but they didn't have access to a TV studio; they didn't have access to the kind of technology that we had to allow them to create programs and share it with the community. So we filled that gap, and that was one of the main things that we did. And then also to be able to create programming for viewers and for the city, so that the municipal meetings can be shown, and so school committee meetings can be shown, and it really brings people in and involved."

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