Man Walked Into NY Police Station and Told Officers He Had Strangled Girlfriend: Reports

Man Walked Into NY Police Station and Told Officers He Had Strangled Girlfriend: Reports
A logo of the New York Police Department in Brooklyn, New York, on Feb. 17, 2019. (Mimi Nguyen Ly/The Epoch Times)
Simon Veazey
4/12/2019
Updated:
4/12/2019

A 23-year-old man walked into a police station in New York and, using an interpreter, allegedly told officers he had killed his girlfriend.

Local reports said that Angel Esteban Feliz Rodriguez told officers he had strangled Indira Ramirez-Rivera, 21, to death on March 10 at their basement apartment in the Bronx.

He gave the keys of the apartment to the police at the 48th Precinct and granted them permission to enter.

They found Rameriz-Rivera, still alive, but unconscious and unresponsive, according to WABC. with signs of trauma to her neck.
Police said that EMS responded but pronounced her dead on the scene, according to  PIX11.
He said in his confession that he was angry because she had stayed out overnight, according to police sources cited by the New York Post.

Feliz-Rodriguez told police he choked her after they got into an argument, according to a criminal complaint cited by NBC.

Rodriguez now faces murder and manslaughter charges.

Rodriguez was prone to fits of violent jealousy, neighbors and friends told the New York Daily News.  They said that police were regularly called to the apartment.

Her friend, Andy Rodriguez, told the Daily News that Indira Rodriguez had gone back to the apartment to pack up her things and leave him.

“He was very jealous. She was very sexy and he didn’t like the way she dressed on the street,” said neighbor Kenia Miniera.

Both worked at bars in the Bronx, according to neighbors.

“They seemed lovable but then they argued and it was heated,” neighbor Smily Rodriguez (no relation), told the Post.

Neighbors told the Post she had just returned from the Dominican Republic, where she had plastic surgery.

The 48th precinct, where Rameriz-Rivera was allegedly killed, has one of the highest murder rates in the city.

New York’s murder rate has dropped steadily over the past few decades, although the Bronx experienced a mysterious uptick in the murder rate last year.

In 1990, there were 653 murders in the Bronx alone, according to official crime statistics. By 2018, that number had dropped to 91.
The murder rate for New York as a whole sits at 3.4 murders per 100,000, almost 20 times lower than the U.S. city with the highest murder rate, St Louis.

The brutal murder of a woman out jogging in a New York park made the national papers last month when the accused was found guilty during a rare second trial.

Chanel Lewis, 22, was found guilty on April 1 of strangling killing 30-year-old Karina Vetrano to death in August 2016.

“This was a horrifying case,” Chief Assistant District Attorney John Ryan said in a statement. “She was pulled from a park pathway, sexually assaulted, and in her last moments of life she gasped for air as the defendant’s hands tightened around her neck.”

According to trial testimony cited by the district attorney’s office, Vetrano was jogging alone in Spring Creek Park in the Howard Beach neighborhood of Queens County on the evening of Aug. 2, 2016.

The last photo of Karina Vetrano at her Howard Beach home, taken moments before leaving for a jog, on Aug. 2, 2016, with her mother in the background. (Queens District Attorney’s Office)
The last photo of Karina Vetrano at her Howard Beach home, taken moments before leaving for a jog, on Aug. 2, 2016, with her mother in the background. (Queens District Attorney’s Office)

Lewis, angered by a neighbor playing loud music, also entered the park.

Without saying a word, he attacked her, hitting her in the face and sexually assaulting her.

Spring Creek Park, Howard Beach, Queens, New York. (Screenshot/Google maps)
Spring Creek Park, Howard Beach, Queens, New York. (Screenshot/Google maps)

Lewis pressed his knees into her torso as he straddled her and clasped his hands around her neck. With two teeth broken, Vetrano continued to fight back but in the end was strangled to death and her body dumped on park land.

On April 1, a jury found Lewis guilty of first-degree murder, second-degree intentional murder, second-degree felony murder, and first-degree sexual abuse.

Lewis had been retried after a previous jury could not agree on a verdict.

Simon Veazey is a UK-based journalist who has reported for The Epoch Times since 2006 on various beats, from in-depth coverage of British and European politics to web-based writing on breaking news.
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