Left apt., then found ma, sis slain

RICHIE CICARDO left his mom’s apartment for just a minute, and returned to a bloodspattered horror show.

His mother and sister were bleeding from gunshot wounds, and the man responsible for killing them had just attempted suicide. His 1-year-old niece was somehow still alive when the gunfire finally stopped.

The 24-year-old “had left to go downstairs to get a pair of headphones,” said NYPD Chief of Detectives Robert Boyce. “At which time when he came back, he found both (women).”

Susan Trivino, 54, and her daughter Suchari Guzman, 29, were gunned down by the mom’s jilted boyfriend Jorge Vega, who botched a Wednesday suicide try after fatally shooting the two women.

“Right now, he’s still alive,” Boyce said Thursday about the killer. “We don’t think he’s going to make it. He shot himself in the head.”

Vega, 52, is a former Metropolitan Transportation Authority bus driver who had recently left his job and was dumped by Trivino one day before the killing, said Boyce.

He returned to her apartment Wednesday with murder on his mind and a 9-mm. Ruger in his pocket, cops said.

A weeping Cicardo, after finding his bleeding mom and sister in their home, carried his 1-year-old niece Abbygail to safety in a nearby apartment and then called 911.

The baby, who was inside the apartment when Vega opened fire on her mother and grandmother, was wrapped in a yellow blanket and taken from the building. The little girl carried a teddy bear with her.

Cops initially thought the bereaved Cicardo was the shooter, but quickly determined he was not responsible for the slaughter.

The television in the murder apartment was turned up so loudly that no neighbors heard any of the gunshots from Vega’s licensed handgun, said Boyce.

Cops finally turned down the volume after arriving at the murder scene. The badly rattled Cicardo was able to give police “the complete narrative” surrounding the 2:20 p.m. killings, said Boyce.

Trivino was shot in the head and chest by her ex-beau, and she died at the scene. Guzman — the mother of little Abbygail — died at Jacobi Medical Center from a gunshot wound to the chest.

The murder weapon was recovered at the scene in the 12-story Soundview building on E. 174th St. near Cross Ave.

“I warned her so many times about that evil man!” screamed Trivino’s mother as tears ran down her face Wednesday.

Police were investigating reports that Vega had been recently dismissed from his $70,000-ayear job by the MTA, although a union spokesman said that the hard-drinking ex-bus driver had resigned.

The shooter had renewed his gun license just two months before the double homicide.

Boyce said the couple had a tumultuous relationship prior to the breakup, with a domestic incident report filed in September but no arrests ever made.

“There was harassment,” said Boyce. “There was an argument . . . . No one had any prior arrest for anything.”

Vega, a former police officer in his native Puerto Rico, was hospitalized in critical condition.

He and Trivino had dated for some time, and she had only recently moved into the apartment.