‘THE BEST WIFE, THE BEST MOM’ IS… SHOT DEAD
Stray bullet rips through bedroom window in Queens
A sleeping Queens mother of three, roused by a late-night din from the quiet street below, peered out her apartment window — and never made it back to bed.
Devoted mom Bertha Arriaga was killed by a random fatal bullet to the head early Wednesday, with her 14-yearold son rushing into her bedroom to find his mortally wounded mother taking a final breath as the fugitive shooter fled from the scene, her family and police said.
“She was the best wife, the best mom,” said her husband, Jorge Aguilar, his eyes red and his heart broken, only hours after his spouse of 19 years died in the city’s latest spasm of pandemic violence. Citywide homicides were up nearly 40% this year through Tuesday compared with the corresponding period last year.
“[My son] said to me, ‘Papi, papi, mom can’t breathe,’ ” the widowed man recalled through tears. “I got up, I did CPR, but she didn’t respond to me. She had already passed.”
The bullet smashed through the 43-year-old victim’s third-floor bedroom window at 12:45 a.m., leaving Aguilar, 56, and his kids without a caring mother and wife who came to Queens from her native Mexico to find the love of her life and raise a family.
“She was the one who would take care of the children, take them to school, wake them up — everything,” said her devastated brotherin-law Javier Aguilar, 42, clutching a cup of coffee outside the building on 34th Ave. near 92nd St. in Jackson Heights.
Javier recounted the middle-of-the-night phone call from his older brother with news of the unfathomable tragedy.
“He told me that Bertha was lying down on the floor with lots of blood coming from her mouth,” said a pale and exhausted Javier. “I said, ‘Why is Bertha bleeding?’ He said, ‘I don’t know’ … He was just in shock.”
The couple’s teen son discovered his mother with blood oozing from her mouth and ran to awaken his father, who was sleeping in another room. Jorge Aguilar said he heard no gunshots, waking instead to their son’s desperate call for help.
“And that ’s when my brother tried to do CPR,” continued Javier. “He told me that her eyes were still open but she was not breathing … a lot of blood on her hair. There was no evidence of any bullet on the body, on the chest. There was just a lot of blood on her head.”
Medics tried in vain to save Arriaga when they arrived at the scene. There was no immediate arrest for the killing in a typically quiet residential neighborhood where the 115th Precinct reported just five shootings incidents in the first nine months of the year.
The NYPD reported 337 homicides citywide this year through Tuesday, compared with 241 over the same
stretch of 2019 — a grim increase of 39.8%.
“This is what senseless gun violence does — it destroys families,” NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea tweeted about Arriaga’s death.
Cops released a video clip showing a motorcyclist and a second man trying to steal a chained bicycle outside Arriaga’s home around the time of the shooting. The NYPD asked for the public’s help in identifying the two suspects seen fleeing the scene in the 12-second video. Both were wearing dark clothing and hoodies.
The victim and her husband immigrated separately from Mexico to Queens, where they met, married and raised three children. Jorge worked in a supermarket, while Bertha tended to their kids and household.
“God knows why this happened,” said Javier Aguilar. “It was just bad timing. She heard some noises, she got up from the bed. She looked out the window, and that’s when it happened.”
Javier said his brother was thinking about returning to Mexico.
“I said, ‘Don’t do that. The kids, they were born here, so don’t do that. That’s not what Bertha wanted for her three children,’ ” Javier said. “She just wanted the best for the kids, that’s why she worked so hard regarding school for the kids. She always mentioned to me, ‘They’re going to go to the best college.’ ”
Javier worried how Jorge Aguilar will balance work and child care, promising that he and the victim’s two siblings would do their best to help.
And Javier noted sadly that the weeping widower has yet to contact Bertha’s mom in Mexico City with the shocking news.
“He already cried a lot,” Javier said of his brother. “I think he can’t cry anymore.”