Slays gal pal - cops
Man fails suicide, is held in slashing
A longtime love affair between a Brooklyn couple turned deadly Tuesday when the man fatally slashed his girlfriend in the neck, then turned the knife on himself in a failed suicide bid.
Cops arrived at the grisly scene inside the apartment on Lefferts Ave. near Washington Ave. — just east of Prospect Park — at about 5 a.m.
The 47-year-old victim, identified by friends as Erica Renaud, was found dead in the apartment, officials said.
Medics rushed her boyfriend, Romeo Borneo, 58, to Kings County Hospital where he remained in critical condition.
“I’m numb. I just don’t want to believe it,” Tony Joseph, a close friend of Renaud’s, said Tuesday. “She didn’t deserve this. She would do anything for anybody.”
Joseph said Renaud was “like a sister” to him.
“(My cousin) told me she saw cops rushing upstairs,” Joseph said. “Somebody said the guy who lived in the building with a girl killed her. I called (Renaud’s) phone, it rang and went to voicemail. Usually she answers.”
“That’s how I found out,” Joseph, 54, said somberly.
Relatives said the couple had been together for years, but the relationship recently soured.
The cafeteria supervisor at NYU was trying to save enough money to move out of Borneo’s apartment, Joseph said.
“Even if she was cheating, that doesn’t give you the right take somebody’s life,” he said.
Yet Renaud’s Facebook page never revealed any tension in the Brooklyn woman’s private life.
Each day, she would post something new on her Facebook page — usually happy pics of herself or her daughter, who enjoyed marching in the Caribbean Day Parade in colorful costumes, Joseph said.
She had also posted pictures of herself and her killer in happier times — either dressed to the nines for an outing or canoodling for a selfie.
“Me and Romeo,” she posted with one picture.
When she stopped posting on social media earlier this week, Joseph felt something was wrong, he said.
“The last time she posted something was two days ago,” he said.
Concerned, Joseph reached out — but still everything appeared normal.
“I spoke to her the day before yesterday, sometime in the evening,” he said. “It was a normal conversation, Erica being Erica.”
Despite the problems the couple was facing, Joseph never thought the relationship would end in bloodshed.
“He seemed normal to me,” he said about Borneo. “He wasn’t the type of dude you would expect to do this.”
But Borneo’s heartbroken aunt said Renaud was the problem — and was often seen “threatening (Borneo) everywhere on the street.”
“She must’ve been nagging him to the fullest,” the aunt, Gloria Burnett, told the Daily News, her eyes welling up with tears. “He couldn’t take it anymore.”
Charges against Borneo were pending Tuesday.