By Adam Pincus
Modesta, 29, lived with Jorge, their 23-year-old brother Leonardo and her baby daughter in a basement apartment in Corona, a neighborhood filled with other Mexican immigrants escaping poverty in their home country.Their mother and father are tenant farmers near Tlapa in the coastal state of Guerrero, where they live with four children and survive on money earned from raising corn and remittances from their two sons and daughter in America.The news Dec. 6 from a 110th Police Precinct detective that Jorge, 27, had been stabbed to death earlier that day was a profound blow to his brother and sister in Queens and the family in Guerrero.Prosecutors say a group of four men, three from Jamaica and one from New Jersey, went on a violent spree at about 4 a.m. on Roosevelt Avenue in Corona, when they randomly attacked five men.They group left a neighborhood bar as it closed and attacked Jorge outside of the Tulcingo Bar, stabbing and beating him continuously, killing him, prosecutors said.The four men then turned on four others, beating them all and stabbing two of them, authorities said.The four suspects, all originally from Mexico, are being held without bail awaiting their next court date Feb. 7 in Queens Supreme Court.Jorge was a hard worker who had recently gotten a new job as a dishwasher at Virage Restaurant in the East Village, Modesta said, but he had suffered personal losses in recent years.His dream of living in a home he had paid for by scrimping for several years while he worked in New York in the 1990s was dashed in 2004 when the single-story building collapsed. He lost thousands as the foundation succumbed to rainwater drainage problems.At about the same time, a close friend and restaurant colleague, Miguel Mejia, killed himself, she said.Their parents in Mexico, Felipe and Porfiria Maldonado, were relying on the $100 to $200 that Jorge sent each month. Since his death, one of their teenage daughters has taken a job to make money, though none have dropped out of school.Jorge's body was flown back to Mexico for burial days after the killing, costing them nearly $3,000.”When they received him, the whole family was destroyed,” Modesta said. “They didn't expect him to arrive home that way.”Leonardo, 23, who was closest with Jorge and shared a bedroom with him, has been having nightmares since the death.”You miss the person, but after some time it will be forgotten,” he said.After Modesta and Leonardo learned of their brother's death, they went to Elmhurst Hospital Center, but were told he was not there, and so headed to the morgue at Queens Hospital in Jamaica where they identified him through a photograph. They were not able to see the body until it arrived at the funeral home in Corona.Last week a hospital bill addressed to Jorge for $649.56 for the emergency room visit arrived, leading them to fear another expense from the death. A hospital spokesman said the computer generated invoice could be ignored.Modesta did not blame America for the death, noting it was other Mexicans who are accused of the stabbing.”I think the people who were arrested came for the same things, but they did something else,” she said.Reach reporter Adam Pincus by e-mail at news@timesledger.com or by phone at 718-229-0300, Ext. 154.
