Stabbed And Smothered Him During Dispute
A 59-year-old Flushing mother has been sentenced to seven years in prison for causing the death of her disabled adult son inside their apartment in March 2011 following a verbal dispute regarding his medical condition.
Queens District Attorney Richard A. Brown identified the defendant as Migdalia Veras, 59, of 137th Street, who pled guilty last month to firstdegree manslaughter. She was sentenced last Friday, Aug. 31, to a determinate term of seven years in prison by Acting Supreme Court Justice Dorothy Chin-Brandt.
“The sentence imposed today punishes the defendant for her senseless act,” Brown said last Friday. “Moreover, she must now live with the knowledge that she alone is responsible for her own son’s demise. Hopefully, she will receive the counseling she obviously needs while in prison.”
According to the charges, on the afternoon of Mar. 2, 2011, Rene Veras, 39, who suffered from cerebral palsy and was confined to a wheelchair, approached Migdalia Veras with a knife and begged her to kill him, something he allegedly had been asking her to do for months.
After a verbal argument, Migdalia Veras picked up the knife and stabbed her son twice in the chest. The elder Veras then put a pillow over her son’s face and held it there for at least two minutes.
Migdalia Veras then tried to kill herself by cutting her wrists and stabbing herself in the chest. She was transported to New York Hospital Center of Queens for treatment of her self-inflicted wounds.
The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner ruled that Rene Veras died as a result of stab wounds to his chest and asphyxia.
Assistant District Attorney Shawn Clark of the District Attorney’s Homicide Trials Bureau prosecuted the case under the supervision of Assistant District Attorneys Brad Leventhal, bureau chief, and Jack Warsawsky, deputy bureau chief, and the overall supervision of Executive Assistant District Attorney for Major Crimes Charles A. Testagrossa and Deputy Executive Assistant District Attorney for Major Crimes Daniel A. Saunders.
