by alex davidson
A 51-year-old home health care aide was found dead Sunday night at the home of her employer in Richmond Hill.
Police from the 102nd Precinct were summoned at 5:50 a.m. Sunday morning to 87-33 111th St., where Rosalie Miller, the victim, took care of Anna Auble, 89, and her daughter, Mary Auble, 63, police said. Police have confirmed that the wounds on Miller’s head were caused by a “cutting instrument.”
A spokeswoman for the chief medical examiner said the cause of death was incised wounds to the head and neck as well as a blunt impact to the head. She also said the death has been officially classified as a homicide.
Mary Auble, who, according to a neighbor, was away for the weekend, came home and found the live-in health care attendant suffering from a head injury, police said. Police pronounced Miller dead on arrival after finding her on the living room floor.
Miller’s family and boyfriend are out of state and have yet to be notified of her death, police said. Neighbors said Miller was a native of Antigua and had two grown daughters.
“I was surprised,” said a 70-year-old neighbor and friend. “When you live here long enough, you get to know everyone in the community, and Rosie was a nice person and would say hello when you passed her on the street.”
Another neighbor, a 47-year-old single mother, said she knew Miller as a “nice lady” and someone who would talk to two or three people at a time on the street.
“I was shocked myself,” she said. “We came home last night and saw the commotion and didn’t know what was happening,” she said.
The neighbor, who lives two houses away from the Auble home, said she was concerned not only for the herself but for the whole neighborhood.
“Now we have to take precautions,” she said. “My daughter is young and I don’t want anything to happen to her.”
To date this year, only one murder has been reported in the 102nd Precinct, down from two in the same period last year, Police Department statistics show.
The statistics paint the neighborhood just off Jamaica Avenue as having experienced significant decreases in crime over the past nine years. There has been an overall decline in robbery, felony assaults, burglary and car theft, the statistics reveal. The only increase has been in the number of reported rapes.
The 102nd Precinct covers the neighborhoods of Kew Gardens, Richmond Hill East, Richmond Hill, Woodhaven and the northern part of Ozone Park.
Still, residents spoke of a friendly neighborhood where everyone knew each other by face and took the time to get to know one another. Neighbors were comfortable talking about Miller and one even sat by her window, across from the Auble’s yellow house now fenced off with police line, to watch the police investigation take place.
“We never really had a conversation together, but you would see Rosie talking on the street,” a neighbor said. “People would talk in groups and Rosie would be talking with two or three people at a time; she was a lovely person.”
Police withheld further comment due to the ongoing investigation.
Reach reporter Alex Davidson by e-mail at Timesledger@aol.com or call 229-0300, Ext. 156.
