Fatally stabbed as daughter watches
A Queens man was charged with murder Wednesday after allegedly stabbing his live-in girlfriend 14 times in the chest, neck and torso as her teenage daughter watched in horror, authorities said.
Accused killer Carmelo Mendoza, 41, also slashed the 19-year-old daughter’s leg when she rushed to the aid of her mom, Yaqueline Collado, the owner of a local beauty salon, according to prosecutors.
Collado, with her dying breaths, told her bleeding daughter to flee the gorespattered Jackson Heights apartment where the teen lived with the couple.
“I’m dying,” she told the young woman. “Get out of here.”
Mendoza, who stabbed himself in the torso several times after killing Collado, was lying atop the victim’s lifeless body when police arrived in the apartment at 2:20 a.m. last Friday. He remains hospitalized at Elmhurst Hospital Center, authorities said.
“This defendant is accused of committing a despicable act of violence against a woman he supposedly loved,” said Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz. “In the heat of an argument, the defendant allegedly stabbed the victim to death in front of the woman’s daughter.”
Neighbors described Mendoza as a jealous Jekyll and Hyde who behaved well in public but became abusive with Collado behind the closed doors of their sixth-floor apartment.
The teenager was told by her mother to go to her room when the couple began fighting, with the young woman rushing back outside after hearing Collado scream her name, according to Katz. The daughter began flinging items from the apartment at Mendoza, and eventually fled on her mother’s instructions.
The screaming daughter then began banging on neighbors’ doors in a desperate and ultimately futile attempt to save her mother’s life, officials said.
Mendoza was additionally charged with assault and criminal possession of a weapon in the deadly rampage. He faces 25 years to life in prison if convicted.
Collado, a mother of three, opened her own business in 2018 and spoke with her son on the phone just hours before her death, according to her exhusband.