Police ID woman found dead with bag on head
A 34-year-old woman whose decomposing corpse was found in a Bronx apartment with a plastic bag wrapped around her head died from asphyxiation, the city’s Medical Examiner said Thursday, ruling the woman’s death a homicide.
Firefighters and city EMTs responding to a call of a foul odor coming from an Ogden Ave. apartment near W. 167th St. in Highbridge on Saturday evening found victim Norayshma Fernandez sprawled face-down on the floor in a bedroom, police said.
Firefighters had to force open the locked apartment door before going inside, cops said.
Fernandez was found wrapped in a blue and white comforter and had a plastic bag covering her face and head. She had been dead for days.
An autopsy determined she died of “homicidal asphyxiation,” police said.
Fernandez lived on Sedgwick Ave. at a shelter in the Stadium Hotel about a half-mile from the apartment where she was found. It was not clear what she was doing in the apartment.
The apartment’s tenant hasn’t been located, police said. A week before her discovery, on April 30, police arrested an emotionally disturbed man brandishing a large knife in the same apartment at the Ogden Ave. building, cops said.
Geza Hay, 46, swung the knife at responding officers, and was charged with attempted assault on a police officer with a deadly weapon.
His connection to the woman is unclear; he’s been locked up on Rikers Island since April 30, city correction department records show.
Multiple residents at the shelter said they recognized Fernandez from a photo and that she hadn’t been seen recently around the shelter.
The victim’s mother, Jackelinane Santiago, said she last spoke with her daughter on the evening of April 29. She said she often sent Fernandez money, including to cover her phone bill.
“She told me she needed $100 for her phone,” said Santiago, who lives in Orlando, Fla. She said she sent her daughter the money, but Fernandez never called back.
Santiago said her daughter loved Spanish music, dancing and seafood, and had moved to New York City from Orlando two years ago with a friend who promised that “life was good” in the Big Apple. Recently, Fernandez sent her mother a photo of a new boyfriend.
“She was a happy woman, a happy girl,” her mother said. The grieving mother planned to fly to the city in a week to talk with NYPD detectives.
“I want justice,” Santiago said, “because my daughter was not a bad person.”
Another shelter resident, Jessica Acosta said, she wasn’t surprised Fernandez was killed.
“It’s crazy up here,” she said, pointing up the road towards where Fernandez’s body was found, adding there were two recent stabbings nearby.
Acosta said she often thinks about the girls who “you just stop seeing” in the shelters. “I have to, when I walk on these streets at night,” Acosta said, “I think about it a lot.”