NY police give more details on 5 stabbing deaths
Print Edition
When relatives of a Chinese immigrant mother of four young children banged on the family’s door, it opened to a grisly sight: a man dripping with human blood who is now charged with stabbing the five to death with a butcher knife.
Mingdong Chen, 25, faced five counts of murder on Sunday, a day after the killings of his cousin’s wife and her four children in Brooklyn’s Chinatown neighborhood in New York.
Two girls, nine-year-old Linda Zhuo and seven-year-old Amy Zhuo, were pronounced dead at the scene, along with the youngest child, 18-month-old William Zhuo — all found in a back bedroom, police said. Their brother, five-year-old Kevin Zhuo, and 37-year-old mother, Qiao Zhen Li, were found in the kitchen and taken to hospitals, where they also were pronounced dead.
The five “were cut and butchered with a kitchen knife,” said Chief of Department Philip Banks III, the New York Police Department’s highest-ranking uniformed member.
The victims died of stab wounds to their necks and torsos, and Chen has implicated himself in the killings, Banks said.
“It’s a scene you’ll never forget,” he said.
Chen had been staying with the family for about a week.
He was unemployed after being fired from a string of restaurant jobs he couldn’t hold down for more than a few weeks at a time, according to neighbors and relatives in the working-class neighborhood dominated by a large community of immigrants from China.
Almost a decade after coming to the US as a teenager, he still was fluent only in Mandarin Chinese, Banks said.
“He was bouncing around,” said Banks.
Chen apparently was jealous of fellow immigrants’ successes in America.
“He made a very soft comment that since he came to this country, everybody seems to be doing better than him,” Banks said.
The children’s father, Chen’s cousin, was not home as he was working at a Long Island restaurant, a neighbor said.
Qiao tried to call her husband because she was alarmed about Chen’s “suspicious” behavior that evening, Banks said.
Qiao’s sister-in-law and her husband went to the house at about 11pm and found Chen, Banks said.
The couple fled when they saw Chen dripping blood and called the police.
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