By Christina Santucci
A 54-year-old woman with puncture wounds in her neck was found murdered in a Woodhaven home Sunday evening and police are now searching for whoever killed her, the Police Department said Monday.
Responding to a call of an elderly person in need of help at about 9:30 p.m., police said they found the unresponsive woman inside the first-floor apartment of a house on 91st Avenue and 88th Street. Emergency responders were called, and the woman was pronounced dead, police said. Her identity was being withheld until her family was notified, according to the NYPD.
Grace Law, a neighbor who lives on the same block, said she noticed emergency vehicles pulling up on the tree-lined block.
“I saw the ambulances and the police cars. I said, ‘somebody got sick,’” Law said of her initial thoughts.
Once the medical examiner arrived, however, Law said she and her family knew something much more serious had happened.
Law described her neighbor, who had lived in the home for the past five years, as a former immigration attorney from Pakistan who had two children and two grandchildren. Law recalled seeing the woman playing in the backyard with her grandkids over the summer.
“She was like a kid with them with the hose,” Law said of her neighbor.
Law said that one other person – a male tenant – also lived at the Woodhaven home.
As she watched members of the Crime Scene Unit and detectives conduct their investigation Monday morning, Law said she would greatly miss her neighbor.
“I still can’t believe she is gone, and she is gone in such a tragic way,” Law said.
