Janice Cruz 50 year old NYC woman charged with murdering 97 year old Lower East Side aunt Antonia Cardona. Woman with history of mental issues confesses to strangling elderly woman.
A woman who allegedly strangled her own 97-year-old aunt to death in NYC‘s Lower East Side, reportedly told arresting officers, ‘I killed her, I killed her!’ while being taken into custody over the weekend.
Janice Cruz, 50, was busted on Saturday, Sept. 4, and charged with the murder and strangulation of her 97-year-old aunt, Antonia Cardona.
Cruz who has a history of mental health issues, confessed to her 19-year-old son that she killed the elderly family member.
Cruz who lives in another building in the complex, on Delancey Street, reportedly took care of the elderly woman, helped her get in and out of the bathroom, and used to bring her food every day before murdering her own aunt the nydailynews reported.
‘I don’t understand it, because she would bring her food every day,’ Culma Mercado, 76, Cardona’s longtime friend said. ‘Every day she took care of her.’
‘It’s ridiculous. But things happen. People go off.’
Cardona’s body was discovered in her 18th-floor apartment on Columbia Street in the Baruch Houses on Friday morning, Sept. 3, by Rosa Perez, Cardona’s home health aide who also accompanied the elderly victim to Sunday Mass every week.
‘If I found her in a normal death, a regular death, I wouldn’t be the way I am,’ Perez said.
Following the discovery of Cardona’s body, Cruz was arrested and taken to Bellevue Hospital for a psychiatric evaluation by law enforcement, the nypost reported.
‘She seemed normal,’ a female local resident said of the niece. ‘We were playing dominoes one time over here on those tables. She seemed normal and I used to see her in and out of the building.’
Added the woman: ‘It didn’t seem like she was that type of person to kill someone. And your own family? C’mon. It’s ridiculous. But things happen. People go off.’
Officials to date did not say what led to the 50 year old woman killing her 97 year old aunt.
Cruz currently awaits her arraignment before the Manhattan Criminal Court.
