ROOMIE WANTED HER OUT
Suspect’s ‘motive’ in nurse slay
The young nurse accused of killing her coworker-roommate had been ordered to move out by the victim before the murder, the dead woman’s son alleges.
And while Kyimar Thein lay dying in a locked closet, her wrists and ankles bound and her mouth duct-taped shut, the suspect and her boyfriend allegedly stole the victim’s credit card and tried to use it to flee the scene via Uber, according to the victim’s son and a law-enforcement source.
The roommate, Annika Cansino, 23, and her boyfriend, Alexander Alberda, 21, were charged with second-degree murder and kidnapping in the July 18 murder at Thein’s apartment in Prospect-Lefferts Gardens, Brooklyn.
“The day before she passed away, I talked with my mom, and she said she would stop sharing an apartment with Annika,” said the son, Zaya Kyaw.
“She was going to kick her out, and she asked Annika to move by the 25th of July,” he said.
Thein, a 58-year-old grandmother, had been renting the two-bedroom Lenox Road flat and subletting a room to Cansino for about four months, but the arrangement was strained by Alberda’s presence.
“My mom didn’t like another man coming in and living in their apartment,” said Kyaw, a 38-year-old pediatrician who lives in Thein’s native Burma.
“There was an agreement. Only Annika, not her boyfriend.”
His mom had trusted Cansino, who worked beside her at SUNY Downstate Medical Center, along with Cansino’s mother, who is also a nurse.
“They used her,” Kyaw seethed.
The last straw came in mid-July, when Thein returned from visiting her sister in Florida to discover Cansino and her beau had trashed the place, according to Kyaw.
“She said her apartment is like a rubbish bin,” he said.
The trio got into an argument on July 18 over the living situation and Thein pushed Cansino, according to the criminal complaint.
Alberda jumped in and put Thein in a chokehold, duct-taped her mouth and tied up her wrists and ankles, the charging documents from the pair’s Oct. 25 arrest state.
The callous couple wrapped Thein in a bedsheet, stuffed her in the closet and left her there to die, according to police.
Cansino told cops she took a final glance at her roommate and saw she was still breathing before they locked the closet door and fled, the criminal complaint alleges.
Surveillance footage from the building suggests the pair worked quickly. It shows Thein arriving home from the night shift on the cardiac floor around 9:15 a.m., according to Kyaw. Cansino and her boyfriend can be seen leaving with bags in hand about an hour later. Thein never appeared on the footage again.
Her son doesn’t buy the couple’s story that Thein pushed Cansino.
“My mom is not the kind of person to start fighting with her hands,” Kyaw said.
Thein moved into the building, where apartments rent for around $2,000 a month, about 10 years ago after separating from her second husband, according to Kyaw.
She sublet the second bedroom to female coworkers and friends not only for the extra income, but also because she wanted a “companion.”
In one chilling photo posted to Cansino’s s since-deactivated Facebook page six weeks before Thein died, the roommates celebrated Cansino’s birthday at the Brooklyn hospital with other staffers. Thein and Cansino are seen posing with a group, all wearing hospital scrubs except one person: Alberda, who is pictured in the background peering at the camera with a tight-lipped smile and raised eyebrows.
Kyaw said his mother told him that Alberda would regularly show up to the hospital and shout and argue with Cansino in the hallways.
Alberda has a checkered past. Cops caught him with a 9mm handgun in 2015, according to a person close to the investigation, and he pleaded guilty to criminal possession of a weapon.
A friend said Alberda regularly seemed “aggressive” when the two would talk on the Skout friendfinder app.
“He was always calling me and ranting about random things like girls or problems at home,” 22-yearold Long Island resident Jordan Broom said. “He clearly had anger issues.”
When visited by a Post reporter at Rikers Island, Cansino refused to comment — other than to say she was “not OK.”
Cansino’s lawyer, Edwin Schulman, previously requested she be put on suicide watch.
“It’s kind of traumatic being in there,” Schulman said. “It’s her first time being involved in the criminal justice system. I don’t think she’s even had a parking ticket.”
Fellow nurses are still reeling from the loss of the “kind-hearted” Thein.
“She was always sending gifts to my daughter and does the same for everyone in the unit, especially during night shift hours,” said a fellow nurse who did not want to be identified.
“We have a tragic loss for my family, her friends and her relatives,” Kyaw said. “I feel like I lost everything.”