MOTT HAVEN — A man, jealous over his estranged wife's new boyfriend, fatally stabbed her in the South Bronx on Monday morning while the couple's two children were in the apartment before turning his knife on himself, police said.
The attack took place inside 34-year-old Nadia Saaverdra's apartment at 313 E. 141st St. around 8 a.m., where her 38-year-old husband Alejandro Uribe stabbed her 14 times before fatally stabbing himself in the chest, according to the NYPD.
Officers recovered a knife from the scene.
The couple had a history of domestic violence, and Uribe was taken into custody in January after getting into an argument with Saaverdra and trying to cut himself, police said.
Saaverdra, who had an order of protection issued against Uribe, had two children with him who were in the apartment at the time of the murder-suicide, police said.
Celin Feble, 16, lives across the hall from the family and said she heard the mother yelling "Stop! Please stop!" when she was leaving for school in the morning.
She then walked downstairs and saw the couple's daughter in tears.
"She told me her father was hurting her mom," Feble said.
Toni Melendez, 59, said she has lived in the neighborhood for about 27 years but had never heard of anything like Monday's murder-suicide happening before.
"It's shocking. It's sad," she said.
Victor Soto, 54, described Uribe as a quiet and hardworking man, maintaining that he and Saaverdra had always seemed like a fairly peaceful couple.
“They were always together. You’d never see them in an argument," he said. "I can’t believe he did something like that.”
Although Feble said she has seen police at the apartment before, she had never heard the couple fighting and described Saaverdra as a very kind woman.
"She was always with her kids," she said. "She was really nice."