A 47-year-old woman, Carmen Lopez, was found dead Monday morning inside her Manhattan apartment after being stabbed several times, police said. She was found around 4:30 a.m. in a building on West 129th Street in the Morningside Heights area.
According to the New York City Police Department, a cleaner found Lopez on the third floor and called 911. Officers and paramedics arrived at the scene to find her unresponsive with multiple stab wounds. She was taken to Mount Sinai Morningside Hospital, where she was pronounced dead.
Investigators say a man who knew the victim as her ex-boyfriend, Luis Marquez, has been arrested and charged with murder. He was taken into custody nearby and was considered a person of interest in the case until the following day, when he was arrested. The stabbing seems to have been related to a domestic dispute.
The building porter who found her, Lyron Middleton, reported hearing the audio of the attack on the surveillance cameras, which he couldn’t bear to watch. “She was yelling someone’s name as it was happening,” he said. “She said, ‘Luis, Luis, Luis. Luis stop, Luis stop.’”
Neighbors said they were shocked by the news. One resident who’d known the victim for about twenty years, Jay, even reported hearing loud arguing. “I was up very late, I didn’t hear much, but I heard a commotion between 3 and 4 a.m., like people arguing,” Jay said. “It definitely just sounded like arguing. She was a very nice person.”
The neighbors also shared that the victim has four children and had lived there for years, noting she always took her kids to school. With that being said, the hallway was horrifying to see.
“There was a lot of blood, trails of blood, a big puddle,” said Ronald, who lives on the fourth floor. “Like all over the place, like she was running, then stopped in the middle. She probably collapsed.”
The building superintendent witnessed the attack on the surveillance camera. He was shocked and didn’t want to talk about it.
“I saw her on the cameras. When the problem happened. I don’t want to talk about that,” the superintendent said. “I don’t feel good. I don’t know how this happened because they are not a problem person, any, any one of them, they are nice people.”
The tragic death has left the neighborhood shaken.
