A 9-year-old girl was stabbed five times and her 60-year-old grandmother was killed when the grandmother's boyfriend attacked them both in their Bronx apartment building early Wednesday, police said.
Henry Maldonado, 55, woke up the girl and her grandmother, Carmen Irizarry, at their eighth-floor apartment in the St. Mary's Houses on East 156th Street sometime before 5 a.m., according to the NYPD. An argument allegedly led to the stabbings.
The girl was stabbed in the chest, abdomen, thigh and armpit but managed to run out of the apartment, police said. Irizarry was fatally stabbed several times, and the man appeared to have stabbed himself as well.
The girl ran up to Loretta Fleming's apartment on the ninth floor and banged on the door. Fleming said that she answered, saw the girl "full of blood" and took her in.
"She's like, 'My grandfather went crazy. Please help me, help me,'" Fleming said.
Fleming called 911 as the girl cried that the 55-year-old was going to come upstairs and attack her again.
"She said, 'Oh he's going to come up here to get me, he went crazy,'" Fleming said.
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Police responded to the scene and knocked on the family's door, according to the NYPD. They didn't get an answer but heard a male voice inside, so they called supervisors and the department's Emergency Services Unit to get the man out.
Sometime after police arrived on scene, authorities say a fire was set in the apartment's living room. Firefighters were also called to the scene and extinguished the flames.
The NYPD said that ESU officers then went inside the apartment and found Maldonado holding a knife. They ordered him to drop the weapon and stunned him when he didn't obey the order.
Maldonado was pulled out of the apartment and taken into custody, police said. The grandmother was pronounced dead in the living room.
The 9-year-old girl was taken to the hospital for treatment and is in stable condition, police said.
Maldonado was taken to the hospital for treatment as well. Charges against the man were pending, and it's not clear if he has an attorney who can comment on his behalf.
He was scheduled to be arraigned Friday, according to the Bronx district attorney's office.
Police said that it's not the first time they'd been called to the address for domestic abuse, but the last case was about a decade ago.
Fleming said that she was glad the girl was able to make it to her apartment.
"I thank God that I was able to save her and to know she's going to be OK," Fleming said. "I did my job as a mother."
