By Rebecca Henely
A domestic dispute turned into a tragic murder-suicide Thursday when a man stabbed his wife in their Sunnyside apartment and then jumped from the No. 7 train platform about an hour and a half later, police said.
The man and the woman, whose names have not been released, died later the same day at Elmhurst Hospital Center, police said.
“They seemed like a happy couple,” said 42-year-old Elias Suarez, who was the super of their building on 39th Place near Queens Boulevard. “That’s why I was surprised.”
Police said they got the 911 call at 8:05 a.m. about a 41-year-old man who stabbed a 37-year-old woman multiple times throughout her body.
Suarez said he was alerted to the incident when he heard the ambulance and found the woman in her apartment. He said the woman’s daughter, who is about 16, was crying hysterically. She showed police officers a picture of the couple.
“She was in bed,” Suarez said. “She woke up and found her mother in a pool of blood.”
The woman was taken to Elmhurst Hospital Center in critical condition, where she later died, police said.
Officers conducted a canvas of the area around the complex, police said. At 9:35 a.m., the officers went to the intersection of 41st Street and Queens Boulevard to find that the man had gone up to the No. 7 train Manhattan-bound platform and jumped off, police said. He was also taken to the hospital, where he was later pronounced dead, police said.
A CVS employee whose name tag read “John” and who was walking by the scene Thursday said numerous people have jumped from the platform over the years.
Victor Quinde, 66, said through a Spanish translator that he saw the man lying on the ground soon after he jumped.
“He says let me go through, let me see who it is. Maybe it’s a member of my family,” the translator said on behalf of Quinde.
Quinde said the man had a visibly broken bone in his leg and that paramedics had tried to resuscitate him.
He also said he had been on the scene after a Colombian man jumped from the platform about two years ago.
Suarez, who has lived in the couple’s Sunnyside apartment for 20 years and has been the super for 14, said the woman’s mother had lived in the apartment for 16 years and her daughter’s family had joined them six years ago.
“I never saw any violence or any suspicion that there was violence in the apartment,” he said.
Another neighbor, who declined to tell his name, gave a different story.
“This guy, he looked crazy,” the neighbor said.
Reach reporter Rebecca Henely by e-mail at rhenely@cnglocal.com or by phone at 718-260-4564.
