By Joe Anuta
Chen Huang pleaded guilty last week to the grisly killing of a Flushing woman he bashed in the head with a hammer and repeatedly stabbed in 2010 before removing some of her organs with a box cutter, the Queens DA said.
Huang originally faced murder charges, but District Attorney Richard Brown said the plea deal of manslaughter and tampering with evidence would ensure Huang did time and spared the family from reliving the incident.
A lawyer who formerly represented the victim, Qian Wu, and who now represents her husband, said the deal ensured that Huang did time.
“There is no risk that the guy is going to be acquitted if he was found incompetent to stand trial,” said George Clarke, of the law firm of Dai & Associates.
On Dec. 21, Huang will likely be sentenced to 25 years behind bars on the manslaughter charge and two to four years on the tampering with evidence charge, the DA said, the maximum sentence for the charge.
“Today’s guilty pleas is a measure of justice for the victim’s family in that they will be spared the trauma of hearing all the gruesome details of the killing at trial while being assured the person responsible for this brutal attack on their loved one will serve a lengthy prison sentence,” Brown said in a statement.
The details began when Qian Wu filed a police report against Huang in 2006 when he choked her with a rope and punched her in the face, the DA said.
Wu ran an employment agency out of her Flushing home, and Huang attacked her when she failed to find him a job, the DA said.
The day after the assault, Huang again approached Wu while brandishing a knife and demanding a job, the DA said.
Wu’s husband, Yongwei Guo, said that after the two incidents they successfully filed an order of protection against Huang with the NYPD.
Huang was later arrested and since he was an illegal immigrant, was set to be deported from Texas in 2010, the DA said.
But while out on release in January, he traveled back to New York and threatened Wu again.
Wu and Guo alerted police about the threat and tried three times to get an order of protection from police, Guo said, but were not successful.
On Jan. 26, Huang struck Wu with a hammer more than 30 times in a hallway in her apartment building and stabbed her multiple times in the torso, arms and face with a utility knife, the DA said.
Huang then used the knife to cut out her heart and left lung before leaving the body to be found by a neighbor, the DA said.
Earlier this year, Guo filed a $15 million lawsuit against the NYPD, which he said did not do enough to prevent his wife’s death after the couple had gone to police several times to warn them about Huang, Clarke said.
Guo has also filed suit against the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, which was responsible for taking Huang to Texas and subsequently releasing him, Clarke said.
Reach reporter Joe Anuta by e-mail at januta@cnglocal.com or by phone at 718-260-4566.
