News: Recent Murder Cases on Long Island
(Long Island, N.Y.) A fifty-sixty-year-old Garden City man was charged with killing his mother early on Thursday before attempting suicide. Police say that the man strangled his eighty-eight-year-old mother with a piece of clothing, and then proceeded to slit his wrists. Two Garden City Policemen responded to the call.
The man, who was allegedly unemployed, had been stealing money from his elderly mother and didn’t want to her to find out how much he had been spending. Neighbors believe he was the sole caretaker of his mother, whom he lived with in the quiet neighborhood at College Place. Police and authorities do not believe that the woman had any inclination that her finances had been drained, or that the man had been confronted by his mother in any way.
The woman was strangled with a scarf-like item early in the day and was left dead for hours before emergency workers received the call. Her son contacted authorities by a 911 plea for police assistance at roughly eight o’clock that evening. It’s unsure whether emergency workers suspected foul play at the time of the call.
The fifty-six-year-old was treated for his injuries at Nassau University Medical Center in East Meadow after the botched attempt at suicide. He will be arraigned and charged with second-degree murder. Police say that the man had two prior arrests for drunken driving charges. One of the charges occurred in 1998 and the more recent charge happened in 2005.
Neighbors in the community claimed to have seen the man accompany his mother on walks in the area. They also noticed that the walks seemed to diminish over time and believed that the mother had gotten ill in recent years. One neighbor described the fifty-six-year-old as a nice, cheerful man who was typically friendly and polite when he greeted people in the community. Some neighbors hypothesize that the man must have broken down and snapped because it appeared he really cared for his mother.
In other news, a Hempstead man was arrested on Wednesday for a robbery and killing that occurred on September 14th, 1995. The reexamination of a DNA sample left on clothing found at the scene was conducted through technology unavailable fifteen years ago. It linked the suspect to the murder of a sixty-year-old woman who was shot in her vehicle outside her job in a Westbury parking lot.
The man was held without bail and charged with second-degree murder, which could sentence him to twenty-five years to life in prison. He was arraigned Thursday at the First District Court in Hempstead. Police and authorities claim he attempted to rob the woman in her car, which was parked outside the E-Z-EM pharmaceutical corporation where she worked. The woman was known to work several jobs and allegedly was carrying four thousand dollars at the time of the incident.
Reports claim that the woman tried to fight off her attacker because she was beaten before being shot in the head. The man’s next court date is scheduled for Monday and police discovered that he has an arrest record that goes back to the 1960s and includes time served for manslaughter. His most recent arrest is how police were able to link him to the 1995 crime.
