By Adam Pincus
The victim's mother, Florentina Calderon, 54, said afterward she could not. “There is no pardon for what he did,” she said.Luis Roberto Jara Coello, 31, was sentenced to 18 years in prison for stabbing Fanny Anguisaca, 29, in their apartment on 67th Street in Woodside as their 3-year-old daughter watched, the Queens district attorney said.Prosecutors said the killing followed an argument in the couple's apartment on Aug. 28, three weeks after Jara Coello had moved out of the house following an agreement to separate.He stabbed Anguisaca multiple times with a steak knife in the presence of Kelly, then fled the apartment with her, police said at the time. Her family members discovered her body the following day, and Jara Coello turned himself in to authorities Sept. 1.About a dozen of Anguisaca's relatives were present at the hearing, including Calderon, who arrived from her native Ecuador to attend.During the sentencing hearing, prosecutors read a lengthy statement from the victim's mother alleging many incidents of domestic abuse prior to the killing and noting the harm caused to the couple's daughter, Kelly.”There were times that she would call at 2 a.m. to tell me that Luis was hitting her,” Calderon said in the statement. She would send her two sons to check on their sister, but often no one would answer the door. “That happened approximately more than 10 times,” she said.The violence also left a mark on Kelly, her grandmother said in the statement. “When Kelly sleeps, she wakes up crying and she starts talking in her sleep: 'No, Mommy, no.'”When the judge gave Jara Coello the opportunity to speak, court officers unlocked his handcuffs, and he sat down and read from a handwritten note on yellow legal paper.”I never expected this to happen to me, especially for someone I loved so much,” he said about his wife, then apologized through tears.”I am really sorry from the bottom of my heart. I am so sorry.”Supreme Court Justice Randall Eng, who presided over the guilty plea to a manslaughter charge, entered Nov. 29, said he was especially disturbed by this case.”I am haunted by the image of a 3-year-old motherless child,” he said and added that he hoped 18 years in prison would bring opportunity for Jara Coello to reflect on “the evil that you have perpetrated.”Reach reporter Adam Pincus by e-mail at news@timesledger.com or by phone at 718-229-0300, Ext. 154.
