The Bronx Ink

On Sept. 5th, in the early hours of the morning, Natasha Roberts, 46, was in her Parkchester apartment building, when she was fatally stabbed by her husband Jimmy Roberts, police allege.

Responding to a 911 call, police arrived at Natasha Robert’s apartment and found her with stab wounds to her torso. Jimmy Roberts also had stab wounds. Two knives were found at the scene.

“My wife stabbed me and then I stabbed her,” Jimmy Roberts repeatedly said, during his arrest.

The couple had a history of domestic violence. An order of protection issued in June this year forbade Jimmy Roberts from approaching Natasha Roberts or her home.

Hours after that 911 call, shocked gasps reverberated around the room as Deputy Detective Benjamin Gurley informed those at the South East Bronx Community Council meeting of the husband and wife stabbing. “We are struggling with homicide,” said Gurley, “the main issue is domestic violence.”

Dep. Det. Gurley addresses community members at the South East Bronx Council meeting

Photo credit: Joasia E. Popowicz

Five days later, at the Bronx Criminal Supreme court, the door to the right of the hushed court opened and a man accused of murdering his wife stepped out. “C*cksucker,” came the insults from the court pews.

Virgis Solis, 58, walked handcuffed through the courtroom and looked straight at his hecklers sitting at the back of the courtroom.

Solis is accused of repeatedly stabbing his wife, Valarie Solis, in the neck and torso.

The incidents are just two of an increasing number of domestic homicides in the Bronx and the city, against a stark rise in domestic violence reports.  

Last year, there were no domestic homicides in the South East Bronx, where Roberts lived. This year, there have been five between January and September 2018. And in the entire borough, there have been 14 domestic homicides, up from eight in the same period last year. City-wide, the total has gone up from 36, to 38.

The rise in domestic homicides comes after police reported the lowest crime rates in the city since 1951. Police statistics show that in 2017, about 96,000 crimes were reported compared to 102,000 in 2016. Mayor Bill De Blasio called 2017 the “the safest year in modern New York City history.”

New York’s streets may be getting safer but domestic violence has been rising since 2015.

According to the Mayor’s Office to Combat Domestic Violence, city-wide, domestic violence reports rose for three years in a row to 109,000 in 2017 from 75,000 in 2015, up 45%. In the Bronx, it’s a similar story, with 28,000 domestic violence reports in 2017 up from 17,000 in 2015, a rise of 61%.

Domestic violence reports have increased city-wide and in the Bronx since 2015

Graph: Joasia E. Popowicz. Mayor’s Office to Combat Domestic Violence

Domestic violence is a complex issue and there is no one single explanation as to why it’s increasing, according to experts. But unaffordable housing and unemployment are important factors in the rise, according to Tanneh L. Wreh, a Bronx social worker associated with the Career Program at Hostos Community College.

“Women are now depending on a partner to halve that share of their rent or cover their housing,” Wreh said, who works closely with women experiencing domestic violence. Women are staying in abusive relationships because they can’t afford to leave.

Housing “is a factor when you’re not working or if you’re working and making minimum wage,” she said.

More than a third of domestic homicides in New York were in the Bronx this year, a borough especially impacted by rising rents and high unemployment.

The Bronx has the highest unemployment rates in both the city and the state: 6.1 percent as of July 2018, according to the latest figures by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. And, over half of all households are rent burdened, defined as paying anywhere between 30 percent or more of their income on rent, according to a 2017 report published in by the Regional Plan Organization, a leading urban planning research institute.

Unemployment and rent burdens are also reasons why perpetrators resort to violence in the first place, according to Wreh.

“Control. It’s a control thing,” she said. Perpetrators, not being able to control other aspects of their lives, “would like to have that control or power over another individual.”

Studies published by the U.S. National Institute of Justice, the Department of Justice’s governmental research agency, link financial pressure to domestic violence and homicide. The lower the household income, the higher the domestic violence rates and reducing benefits increased domestic homicides.

As was the case with Natasha Roberts’ death, a history of domestic violence is a red flag for risk of homicide, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. “Approximately one in 10 victims of intimate partner violence homicide were reported to have experienced violence in the month preceding their deaths,” according to the CDC.

Police in the South East Bronx make preventive home visits to houses with a history of domestic violence, Gurley said. But, these efforts have not been enough to stop the rise in domestic violence and domestic homicides.

Domestic violence also goes underreported, according to Wreh, which could be one of the reasons for the increase in homicides.

Women are reluctant to make themselves and their situation known to police in the first place because of the potential upheaval, Wreh said. Reporting domestic violence doesn’t just affect the perpetrator.

Women think, “I’m going to be reporting this and I’m going to have to be removed from the housing, going to a shelter until I can find a new place to live – it’s a setback, ” she said.

There are alternatives to police that women can turn to for help, Gurley said. Police work with Safe Horizon, the nation’s leading anti-violence organization. They have an office in the Bronx and can help with housing, counseling and legal services.

But, even if women know services exist, they may be reluctant to seek help because of perceived social stigma and fear of what others will think of them, according to Wreh. However, there are many women going through the same thing, she said.

Jimmy Robert’s next court hearing is Jan. 2nd, 2019. Virgil Solis’s is one week later, on Jan. 9th, 2019. Both are at the Bronx Supreme Criminal Court.

A native of Dominican Republic who works at a Bedford Park bodega was killed inside his apartment in the early hours of Dec. 21 following an attempted robbery, according to the NYDaily News.

Police identified the victim as Anselmo Porras, 51, an employee of Nizao Grocery along Briggs Ave. The robbers reportedly followed Porras home because they suspected he had the night’s receipts.

According to NBC New York, Porras left behind nine children who live in Spain, two kids who live in the Dominican Republic, and one who lives in New York.

In early September, 25-year-old Bronx native Kennedy Brown enrolled as a liberal arts freshman at the College of New Rochelle in Westchester. Three weeks later, the father of 6-year-old twins was offered a part-time job at the retail-clothing store Hollister.

Three days later, in the early hours of Sept. 24, Brown was shot dead, just steps away from his childhood home in Bedford Park.

At the time, family and friends of Brown said they were shocked and could find no explanation for Brown’s shooting, which took place outside an apartment building on Decatur Avenue just off of 197th Street.

Now, more than a month after the shooting, the police have offered neither leads nor suspects. Brown’s family is left with questions as they continue to mourn a man described as a focused, charismatic, and dedicated father.

“Who would want to hurt my nephew?” asked Hope Harris, Brown’s aunt, in an interview near the one-month anniversary of his death. “I don’t understand why he had to die—and die violently. He was a father, he was somebody’s son, cousin. I cry everyday.”

The moments leading up to Brown’s shooting outside an apartment building during a party are still cloaked in mystery. What Brown’s family do know is that just before 2 a.m. on Sept. 24, Brown stepped outside the party alone, readying himself to leave. A few minutes later, he was discovered with a gun wound to his head, and was later pronounced dead at St. Barnabas Hospital.

“He was actually leaving the party,” said Harris.“The way it happened, I think, it was someone close to him. It wasn’t gang violence. We figured it had to be over a girl. Kennedy had over 10 different girlfriends.”

In interviews with several family and friends, Brown’s reputation as a gregarious flirt was well-known. It contrasted with the serious life he led as a student and father to his twins, Kennedy, a girl, and Kron, a boy. A couple of months ago, he had taken the twins’ mother to court to sue for equal visitation rights, said the family.

“He was a person that would do anything to make you smile,” remembered Jazmin Lucas, 18, Brown’s next-door neighbor. “He was very genuine and sincere. I was shocked at what happened.”

Lucas said she remembered sitting on the front porch of her house that fateful morning, when she saw Brown’s mother, Candy, return home from the hospital at 3 a.m.
“She had blood on her hands, and she was saying, ‘This was my baby’s blood. I’m never washing it off,’” recalled Lucas.

Brown’s mother is still too traumatized to speak about the passing of her only son. Brown’s cremated ashes are kept in the second-floor townhouse they shared together in Tremont, said family members.

“She’s not doing good at all,” stated Harris. “We are still taking turns to staying in the apartment. She just can’t believe he’s gone, even now. This was the first homicide in our family.”

Harris believes the family will soon learn to heal after Brown’s passing, but the questions around how Brown died will continue to haunt them.

“It’s hard on the family, because we have no answers,” Harris said.

Kennedy Brown died of a gunshot wound in September. (PHOTO CREDIT: Shykeiya Harris)

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Blood stains on the pavement across the street from Joel Rojas' house in Mott Haven, the morning after he was stabbed to death. In the background, passersby condole his sisters, who set up a small memorial under the mailbox where he was found. (NASR UL HADI/The Bronx Ink)

Joel Rojas must have fought hard for his life.

The trail of blood on East 138th Street in Mott Haven was nearly a block long. It began outside the storefront church at 467, reappeared on a red sports Pontiac parked all the way up at 481, and ended under a mailbox next to it.

When the emergency team arrived shortly after midnight on Saturday, the mailbox was dented, with scratches all around the impact. Rojas, who lived in an apartment just across the street, lay there bleeding from a stab wound to his abdomen. He had almost made it home.

The medics rushed him to Lincoln Hospital, but Rojas was declared dead on arrival at 1:35 am. Police had informed the 24-year-old’s family–his parents, two younger sisters, wife and 3-year-old daughter, Analia.

This stabbing is part of a recent surge in violence across the 40th Precinct. Last weekend, there were six shooting incidents, one of them fatal. The homicide count till October 2 this year is 15, up 15.4 percent from 2010.

Around noon on Saturday, Rojas’ sisters set up a small memorial with candles and bouquets under the mailbox where he was found. A cardboard carton sheltered the candles from the wind, with “R.I.P. Cholo” and “Shortiiee loves you” scribbled on it. Passersby paid their respects and asked how he died, but the family had no explanation.

“We don’t know who my brother was out with or why, because he lived alone in his apartment,” said Laura “Shortiiee” Rojas, a high school freshman, who lives with her parents in another building on the same block. She claimed that there were “a lot of people here who hated Cholo for no reason.”

But most of the gathered mourners weren’t sure they knew him at all. “There’s no photograph of him,” pointed out a woman who lived in the same building, “so I don’t know who it was. But it’s tragic that he was so young.”

People outside the House of Faith Ministries, the church where Rojas’ blood marked the site of the attack, said that two gangs, the Mexicanos and the Chicanos, shared this neighborhood. Brook Avenue, just a block away from Rojas’ home, serves as the dividing line for the gangs’ territories, they said.

But detectives who spent most of the afternoon interrogating people in the neighborhood said that the connection was still speculative. “We keep hearing about the gang rivalry here,” said one of the investigators, “but there’s nothing conclusive yet. We are still looking.”

Rojas’ sister too insisted that her brother, who worked in construction, didn’t hang out with any “bad people.”

This article is by Jennifer Brookland and Ryan Tracy.

Ashley Cardero, second from left, and Angelica Nitura, second from right, stood with friends by a memorial on Cromwell Ave., not far from where 17 year-old Juandy Paredes was stabbed to death Friday night. (Ryan Tracy/The Bronx Ink)

Juandy Paredes’s crew hangs out at 1164 Cromwell Avenue at night, or at the nearby park just north of Yankee Stadium.  They smoke, drink, and make too much noise. The cops come arrest people all the time for trespassing and being loud. In fact, the kids from this neighborhood say they see the same cop and the same ambulance on the corner by the park every night, waiting for trouble.

Trouble breaks out a lot.

In this stretch of Mt. Eden, thumping a few blocks away from the 4 train, graffiti colors the exteriors, kids with Spanish nicknames and tattoos fight members of rival cliques, and questions are met with “I don’t know anything,” by people who do.

Next to guys in sweats with ear-buds tracing lines from their pockets to their ears, Angelica Nitura looks almost out of place in skinny jeans and a blue cardigan.  She talks about her favorite memory of Paredes, a 17 year-old kid they all called “Frko,” or fresh boy. It was on April Fool’s Day, and someone from another crew had taken a guy’s hat. Paredes stood up for the guy, fighting the kids who had taken the hat until they smashed a bottle over his head. Paredes walked angrily back to Nitura.

“His whole side of his head is bleeding, like busted up, leaking,” said Nitura. “I like that he came back, after washing off all that blood. I like that he stood up for his friend. That was my favorite time.”

Paredes’s crew calls itself the “F— Your Life” group, or “F.Y.L.” for short, but insists it’s not a gang. More like a family where everyone watches the others’ backs. There are maybe 50 or 60 of them, all from the neighborhood. Today, laminated badges that they designed on computers swing from their necks showing pictures of Paredes and “4/16/2010,” the date he was killed a few blocks away at 167th and Jerome Avenue. They cross themselves and kiss their fingers in front of the memorial they’ve built for Paredes, a wooden table with tall plastic flowers under his picture, a Dominican flag, and a collection of candles with pictures of saints on them.

Juandy Paredes, pictured here in a collage made by a family friend. (Ryan Tracy/The Bronx Ink)

Their expressions are hard. But only four days after Paredes was murdered, tears come suddenly.

Ashley Cordero is known by her friends as “Shine.” She has her brother’s name tattooed on her right hand, and swirls of color filling the gap between her shirt and her waistband on her left side. She breaks down thinking about the first time she met Paredes. It was July 14th, and she was eating Chinese food in the park. Paredes hung out there a lot because he loved inline skating, trying out tricks on rollerblades that were fitted with a panel on the bottom for sliding along curbs and rails. He told her she was beautiful and he was going to make her his. She offered to share her Chinese food.

Now Cordero is planning the tattoo she’ll get with Paredes’s name and a pair of wings on her back. She and Nitura both feel guilty that he was killed, because they encouraged him to leave the building where they were chilling and playing with knives. It was getting too loud, the cops were bound to come. So Paredes left with two other teen boys and according to Cordero, went to the convenience store on the corner.

Paredes was stabbed five times. Cordero said he flagged down a police van nearby and banged on its windows for help.  “I’m poked, I’m poked,” he told the cops.

Then he collapsed. Paramedics attended to him there on the street, but he died before he arrived at Lincoln Hospital.

The man charged with murdering him lives a nine-minute walk from where the mouthpiece used on Paredes lay full of blood in the street, up Jerome Avenue under the train tracks and past tables selling discount perfume and peeled oranges.

At his arraignment at the Bronx Supreme Criminal Court on Tuesday afternoon, Hector Bautista looked much too young to be charged with second-degree murder. The pony-tailed 18 year-old stood silently when the judge denied his request for bail.

Juandy Paredes' friends scrawled graffiti on the wall across from his family's home. They had nicknamed him "Frko," or fresh boy. (Ryan Tracy/The Bronx Ink)

Outside the courtroom, friends took turns defending Bautista, a basketball player who they said was a jokester with a good heart who had stopped attending high school. They insisted he was innocent of the stabbing.  But they admitted he was part of the conflicts that, fueled by graffiti, girls, and bragging rights, permeate the world of teenagers like him and Paredes.

“They lived in different places. That’s it,” said a girl who identified herself as Bautista’s girlfriend but would not give her name.

In the dimly-lit apartment on Irving Avenue where Paredes lived, cousins, uncles, aunts, and friends wore black, about to attend his funeral. They had heard about Bautista’s arrest, but wondered if police would be able to catch the other two teens police told the family were involved in the fight.

The family was calm and poised on Tuesday.  Two unsmiling men went about filling a cooler with ice and bottles of water for visitors. Until, contagious as a yawn, a long, slow wail broke out from one of the dark-clad women. She lowered her head and balled her hands into fists. The high-pitched sounds of her crying spread to other family members and escaped into the bright sunlight outside, where Paredes’s friends had spray-painted white graffiti over the entire brick surface of the opposing wall.

“If you stay for 20 minutes you can read it all. Then you’ll understand,” said Dualis, Paredes’s 10 year-old half-sister.

Paredes’s room was covered in graffiti, too, blue and black scrawls painted by him or his friends swarm across the walls. “F.Y.L” appeared in several places, and on the ceiling, emblazoned with a heart was the name Brenda. The room was a disaster. A bare strip of mattress poked out from under piles of clothing that spilled onto the floor and made walking impossible. Boxes of his favorite designer shoes were stacked head-high. A heads-up penny lay near the doorway.

“He would clean it every day but that same day he’d make the same mess,” said Dualis.

Graffiti referring to Juandy Paredes' crew cover the walls in his bedroom. Paredes, 17, was stabbed to death on Friday, April 16. An 18 year-old member of a rival crew has been arrested but is denying the charges. (Ryan Tracy/The Bronx Ink)

Paredes used to play “tickle monster” with her on the bed, where they would tickle each other’s feet. They played board games like Monopoly and “Guess Who?” even though Paredes got so mad when she beat him that he swore he wouldn’t play again. Dualis said she usually won.

A computer with a large silver-framed screen sat on a small desk in the corner, where light from the window illuminated the keyboard. Coralys Nunez, who was like an aunt to Paredes, and says he was creative, smart with computers and could “unblock” any website. He thought about being a game designer, if not a fashion designer. He got all A’s in school.

But Paredes had dropped out of school. He just got tired of going, says Dualis. Even Cordero, who says she and Paredes were always together for the past nine months, didn’t know if Paredes had any goals. They just didn’t talk about that, she says.

One of Paredes’s friends created a Facebook page in his memory. Brendalee Torres captioned a picture of her and Paredes kissing with expressions of grief and love, and also, a threat.

“Whoever did this to you gonna get his, trust me.”

Cordero says none of the crew has been killed before, despite all the neighborhood rivalries. But it’s almost as if she thinks Paredes won’t be the last friend for whom she will be forced to light candles.

“The one person you don’t want to lose,” she said,” is the first one to go.”