The deranged Queens dad who allegedly stabbed his spouse and 2-year-old daughter to demise with a kitchen knife as he FaceTimed his nephew was charged with each slayings, cops mentioned Monday.
Ernesto Cruz, 54, was hit with two counts every of homicide and felony possession of a weapon in connection to the horrific Saturday night assault on Forest Avenue close to Menahan Road in Ridgewood, police mentioned.
Cruz was utilizing the Apple video app to speak along with his nephew as he allegedly knifed his 41-year-old spouse Ana Pilatagsi-Moposita 18 instances and his toddler daughter Analiz Cruz 9 instances – each of their neck and chest, police instructed ABC 7.
The panicked nephew known as 911 because the murders had been carried out on his display, with officers arriving to search out that the daddy had stabbed himself within the chest afterward.
Each victims had been taken to native hospitals, the place they succumbed to their accidents, cops mentioned.
Cruz was additionally hospitalized, and was listed in steady situation Monday, police mentioned. It was not instantly clear whether or not he can be arraigned just about from the hospital.
One neighbor who spoke with the heartbroken household claimed Cruz had been mentally abusive to Pilatagsi-Moposita up to now and had threatened a number of instances to take her life.
“He instructed her many instances, ‘At some point, I’m going to kill you.’ Meaning he was planning it,” the neighbor instructed The Publish Sunday.
However police mentioned Monday that the couple didn’t have a documented home violence historical past with the NYPD.
Cruz’s solely brush with the regulation was on Dec. 23, 2022, when he was slapped with a summons within the metropolis’s transit system, however the circumstances round that incident are unclear, cops mentioned.
The identical neighbor instructed The Publish that the lady’s two sons, who lived individually with their father, had been desperately attempting to come up with their mom on the day of the murders, the neighbor added.
“Oh, my God! You don’t need me to explain how they reacted. You’re calling your mother all day, you come right here and listen to somebody killed her. … It was like a shock and panic assault,” the neighbor mentioned of the sons’ reactions. “Everybody was crying, bawling.”
Different neighbors described Cruz and Pilatagsi-Moposita as a seemingly idyllic couple who may very well be noticed pushing their tot in her stroller as they went procuring or did the laundry.
“They had been a standard household, that’s why it’s so stunning,” one neighbor mentioned. “Nobody heard something.”
