MACHETE SLAY IN BRONX APT.
Maniac charged after roommate stumbles upon hacked-up date from hookup site
A machete-wielding Bronx man is accused of fatally hacking a man he met on a dating hookup app — and his roommate walked in on the bloody aftermath of the slaughter, police sources said Monday.
Juan Alonso, 50, was charged with murder, manslaughter and criminal possession of a weapon. Police were still trying to identify the victim of the horrifying attack.
Alonso’s roommate, who had been away, returned home to the apartment he shares with the suspect on E. 206th St. near Perry Ave. in Norwood about 7:10 p.m on Sunday. He found Alonso, machete in hand, standing over the dead victim, sources said.
The victim was lying facedown with slash and stab wounds to his head and back, authorities said.
“He was like so cut up,” building super John Gonzalez, 33, told the Daily News, adding the victim was “on the floor in pieces.”
Alonso was wrapped in a blood-soaked bedsheet when police escorted him out of the apartment complex, Gonzalez said of the grisly scene.
“I asked him what happened when they were putting him in the squad car,” he said “He said he was trying to defend himself. He said he was in the bed sleeping — and when he woke up, there was someone was on top of him trying to rape him. … He was out of it.”
“He was a good guy,” said Gonzalez, who has worked at the building for seven years. “I always talked to him. He always was calm. He didn’t look like the type of guy who would do something like that.”
Alonso met the victim on Grindr, a popular gay dating and hookup app, sources said. It wasn’t clear what prompted the bloodshed, or if the pair had met in person before Sunday.
“I know he used to go on a lot of dates,” said Gonzalez. “He was always having a new boyfriend.”
The distraught roommate told police he was placed in the apartment by a real estate agency and didn’t know the suspect well, despite their shared living quarters.
Alonso appears to be emotionally disturbed, sources said.
Several other murders this year have involved dating app encounters — including the death of an Upper East Side antiques dealer who reportedly met his lover-turned-killer online, and the slaying of a 25-year-old Utah woman whose Tinder date identified himself as the killer in a 911 call.
A Michigan man was also charged in December with murdering his Grindr date on Christmas Eve.