The Chelsea East Side Money gang member indicted for recklessly shooting into a crowd outside an Everett nightclub in 2015, killing a 21-year-old mother, will spend more than six years in federal prison for drug dealing.

U.S. District Court Chief Judge F. Dennis Saylor IV sentenced Henry “Junior” Del Rio, 28, to 78 months in prison to be followed by three years of supervised release on charges of conspiring to distribute fentanyl and cocaine.

“The dangerous and recidivist nature of Defendant’s offense cannot be overstated,” federal prosecutor Michael Crowley wrote in a sentencing memo. “Within approximately 18 months of being placed on supervised release in connection with his conviction for multiple federal felonies … Defendant was back dealing drugs (including fentanyl, cocaine base and cocaine) with fellow East Side Money Gang members and doing so with a loaded firearm.”

Del Rio and his co-defendant, Jose Perez, led Lexington Police on a high-speed chase — reaching 85 mph on residential streets — a little before 11 p.m. on Dec. 8, 2022. It ended when Perez, at the wheel of the Ford Explorer leased to Del Rio, collided into a Prius with at least one passenger inside and then careened into a fence before coming to a stop at the edge of a Stop and Shop parking lot, according to the sentencing memo.

Lexington Police saw Del Rio drop an object as he got out, which was a loaded Glock that had been reported stolen months earlier. The two suspects fled, with Perez swiftly getting arrested and officers finding drug baggies strewn along Del Rio’s flight path as they pursued. They found an additional baggie in the Explorer’s central console after nabbing Del Rio.

Perez was convicted for his part in the crime in August 2024 and sentenced to 142 months, or 11 years and 10 months, in federal prison that December.

Murder

Del Rio has previous East Side Money Gang-related federal convictions for racketeering, firearms and drug distribution. He was also indicted in January of last year for the first-degree murder of Ashlee “Penny” Berryman, a 21-year-old mother of a 3-year-old son, in 2015, a case had gone cold until last year.

Berryman was not the target. Instead, according prosecutor David Solet, the chief of the Middlesex DA’s Cold Case Homicide Unit, Del Rio got into a verbal argument with two men outside the Braza Grille nightclub in Everett a little before 1 a.m. on Aug. 13, 2015, and then “raised a 40 caliber semi-automatic firearm and fired repeatedly at two men.”

The bullets went wild and actually struck one of the men, but also the front window of a pharmacy, the roof of a passing car and, finally, the back and heart of Berryman.

Del Rio pleaded not guilty. A jury trial scheduled for Friday has been rescheduled to May 19, according to court records.

Ashlee Berryman (Courtesy / Middlesex DA)