Brooklyn, NY: Man Accused of Killing Companion and Her Two Daughters

January 23, 2010


By AL BAKER and ANN FARMER
A 24-year-old man fatally stabbed his companion and her two young daughters in their Brooklyn home, wrapped them in garbage bags, and waited at least a day before calling his father in the Bronx to tell what he had done, the authorities said Friday.

About 1 p.m., two officers from the 67th Precinct arrived at a second-floor apartment at 728 Rogers Avenue where the man, identified by the police as Jermaine Ruiz, lives.

Shortly before that, according to the police, Mr. Ruiz’s father walked into the 45th Precinct station house in the Bronx to say that his son had phoned him and claimed to have killed the children.

As Mr. Ruiz, standing shirtless in slacks and a jacket, answered the knock at Apartment 2F, the officers were able to see past him and down a vestibule to the left, where the blood-spattered body of a woman, stabbed several times, was lying face-up, partly shoved inside a large black garbage bag, the police said.

The apartment was in “complete disarray, with blood on the floor,” said Paul J. Browne, the Police Department’s chief spokesman.

As the officers walked through the apartment, they discovered the bodies of two young children in another room, inside a rolled-up carpet wrapped in two other garbage bags, officials said. Investigators said all three victims appeared to have been stabbed.

Mr. Ruiz “made statements implicating himself in the deaths,” Mr. Browne said, adding that charges against him were pending. “He said he used a knife. That has not been recovered yet.”

The police said that the girls were ages 2 and 5. The woman was 22. None of the victims’ names were released. The police said that the children were not Mr. Ruiz’s, but were the dead woman’s by different men. Mr. Ruiz and the dead woman are parents of twin infants, but they live with his relatives in the Bronx, the police said.

Officials said they believed that the killings occurred sometime Wednesday night or Thursday morning.

“We think they have been dead for at least a day,” Mr. Browne said.

He said that investigators had not yet determined a motive for the killings. But on Wednesday night, Mr. Browne said, Mr. Ruiz and the woman were seen arguing in front of the building, a fight that turned physical and continued inside the apartment. The police said they did not know the nature of the fight.

Mr. Ruiz had been living in the apartment in the three-story brick building for six months, the police said.

Some neighbors said Friday that the woman worked in a hospital, and they had seen her in a white uniform.

“She’s a nice lady,” said one neighbor, Ray Brown, 25, a mover. “She does 9-to-5 and comes home and takes care of her kids.” He said he believed the woman, whose name he did not know, also had two older children.

Another resident of the area, Fiona Alexander, 25, who has relatives at 728 Rogers Avenue, said she saw Mr. Ruiz around noon Friday, standing at the corner of Rogers and Martense, smoking a cigarette.

“He was jittery,” she said. “He was acting nervous. He was pacing up and down.”

Ms. Alexander said she recalled seeing the couple arguing often. “She’s always arguing about smoking,” she said. “I don’t think she likes the company he keeps.”