It was the niece, cops say; charged in slay of aunt, 97
A churchgoing Lower East Side grandmother found dead in her apartment was killed by her niece, police said — the same woman who cared for the elderly woman every day.
Janice Cruz, 50, was arrested Saturday and charged with murder and strangulation in the death of her 97-year-old aunt, Antonia Cardona, police said Sunday.
“I don’t understand it, because she would bring her food every day,” said Culma Mercado, 76, Cardona’s longtime friend. “Every day she took care of her.”
Mercado and her fellow parishioners at Our Lady of Sorrows wept as they spoke about Cardona, who made it a point never to miss Mass at the Lower East Side church.
Her home health aide, Rosa Perez, who accompanied Cardona to Sunday Mass every week, found her body in her 18th-floor apartment on Columbia St. in the Baruch Houses on Friday morning. The discovery left Perez gutted.
“If I found her in a normal death, a regular death, I wouldn’t be the way I am,” Perez said in Spanish, crying. “She was a love.”
Police initially took Cruz to Bellevue Hospital for psychiatric evaluation after they found Cardona’s body.
Neighbors said the niece howled, “I killed her! I killed her!” as police led her from the building.
“There’s no doubt that was the one that did it, she was crazy,” Mercado charged. “We’re still thinking ‘What made her do this?’... Something must have made her snap.”
Mercado described Cardona as a “very quiet woman.”
Other Our Lady of Sorrows parishioners broke into tears when they learned of Cardona’s death. One woman wailed in shock.
“My son sent me something, but when I was reading it the name didn’t sound familiar,” said parishioner Maria Diaz, 64. “I didn’t know till a little while ago when I saw her picture.”
“Everybody wants to die of old age in their sleep, and somebody robbed her of that,” she added.
Cruz, who lives in another building in the complex, on Delancey St., came by often to help Cardona get in and out of the bathroom, the victim’s grandson told the Daily News.
“I really hope the cops investigate this well,” the grandson, Chris Cardona, said Saturday. “I don’t know 100%, but it had to be about money.”
Cruz awaits arraignment in Manhattan criminal court.
Cardona’s death is the first homicide in the 7th Precinct, which covers the Lower East Side, since the July 13, 2020, killing of tech entrepreneur Fahim Saleh, who was dismembered in his $2 million apartment on E. Houston St. Saleh’s executive’s assistant has been charged in the gruesome slaying.
Before Saleh’s death, the precinct last saw a homicide in 2016.