FILE – Police at a crime scene.
Photo by Dean Moses
Police say the man who allegedly stabbed his wife and young daughter to death in Queens last weekend called his sister following the attack and told her to “send help.”
According to NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny, 54-year-old Ernesto Cruz suspected of the horrific murders was not able to be tested for his alcohol levels since he had to be immediately rushed to a local hospital for emergency surgery.
Cruz is believed to have turned the knife on himself, stabbing his own chest multiple times and slashing his left wrist. After coming out of surgery, he refused to speak with the police — but showed little signs of remorse.
“When we went to go speak to him, he just stared at the wall and pretended like we weren’t there,” Chief Kenny said at a July 24 press briefing. “We observed him in his hospital room for over 40 minutes, and he was talking. He was watching TV. He got up to use the bathroom. When we wanted to go speak to him, he shut down on us.”
Cruz allegedly went on a stabbing spree inside of his Forest Avenue home on July 19, taking a knife to his 41-year-old wife Ana Pilatagsi-Moposita. The NYPD reported that she had been stabbed some 18 times, six of which pierced her heart. She was found on the floor.
Police said his 2-year-old daughter, Analiz Cruz, suffered nine stab wounds to the face and body and perished from a severed artery.
“Neighbors and family members never heard fighting, never had arguing,“ Chief Kenny said. “Nobody here involved has any prior criminal history.”
While police say it does not necessarily indicate motive, when interviewing family members, they stated that Pilatagsi-Moposita would often get jealous of her husband due to a past relationship and would ask her husband to let her go through his cellphone.
Cruz himself did not reportedly suffer any mental illness but “was known to drink alcohol,” Chief Kenny reported. Cruz called his sister following the deaths.
“He actually calls his sister and says, ‘Get here now, ‘they’re dying, send help.’ She panics, her son calls back, starts Facetiming with them,” Chief Kenny said. “The Facetiming caught some of him stabbing himself.”
Cruz is charged with two counts of murder and two counts of criminal possession of a weapon.
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