Two Arrested in Bronx Triple Murder
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Police yesterday arrested two of three suspects in the binding, gagging, and shooting of four people – three fatally – in a Bronx apartment.
One of the homicide victims was an 18-year-old mother of a 2-year-old boy who was found unharmed in the bathroom beside his dead mother. The woman’s cousin, Johanna Hartley, 23, was also in the bathroom and was able to survive by feigning her death, the police commissioner, Raymond Kelly, said outside City Hall yesterday.
At about 11 p.m. on Tuesday, police went to an apartment at 2427 Webster Ave. in the Fordham section of the Bronx after receiving a telephone call about gunshots, police said. Ms. Hartley, who suffered a gunshot wound to the left shoulder, managed to slip out to a neighbor’s house, and the neighbor called 911. Ms. Hartley told police that she and her husband, Elvis Hartley, 47, were visiting her cousin, Dilsia Tejada, 18, Tejada’s 2-year-old son, and Tejada’s boyfriend, Miguel Aquino, 37, in the apartment where the latter three resided. The three suspects entered the apartment, possibly searching for drugs, Mr. Kelly said.
“It appears to be motivated by drugs. Again, we’re still trying to sort out precisely what the motivation was, but clearly drugs were involved as the nexus of this shooting,” Mr. Kelly said. Complaints were filed two years ago about drug sales in the building, Mr. Kelly said later yesterday.
Police found the two male victims dead in the living room and Tejada in the bathroom, all with gunshot wounds to the head. Ms. Hartley and the toddler were taken to St. Barnabas Hospital in stable condition, police said, and then the child was placed in the custody of relatives.
Police arrested Jose Curet, 34, and Noel Bruno, 26, and were pursuing a third suspect. Police arrested Mr. Curet after he arrived at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital with a gunshot wound, claiming to be the victim of a robbery in upper Manhattan. Curet’s criminal record includes close to 20 arrests, police said, for charges ranging from armed robbery to criminal possession and sale of drugs, to weapons possession to auto stripping. Mr. Bruno has at least one prior arrest for robbery and criminal possession of a weapon.