QUEENS — Two young sisters and their churchgoing mother were found brutally stabbed to death in their Jamaica home Sunday evening — sparking a manhunt by police for the girls' father, sources said.
Daniela Mejia, 2, Yoselin Mejia, 1, and their mom Deisy Garcia, 21, were found repeatedly stabbed — using four different knives — inside a bedroom of their Sutphin Boulevard home near 90th Avenue about 7:30 p.m., the NYPD said. They were all pronounced dead at the scene, police said.
Investigators are looking for the husband, Miguel Mejia-Ramos, 28, a construction worker, who sources say may have killed the trio Saturday night and left the door to the room closed behind him, allowing him to flee.
Police are asking the public to be on the lookout for his white 2001 Chevrolet commercial van with the New York plate number 22128MD or his white 1995 Dodge Suburban New York tag GHS2798.
Even veteran investigators were stunned by the brutality of the murders.
"I've been to hundreds of crime scenes. This was awful to see such young children the victims of such violence," said Queens District Attorney Richard Brown.
The knives police believe were used in the murders had been left in the room, sources said.
The family shared the apartment with 16 people, but sources said the girls and their mother may have lay dead in their bedroom up to 20 hours after the attack, sources said.
"She was a sweet lady. She would give you whatever she had in her pocket. She went to church every Sunday, but she wasn't in church yesterday," said Garcia's friend, 44-year-old Diana Villa. "Everybody was wondering why and saying, 'What happened?'"
On Sunday evening, a 12-year-old boy who lived in the apartment finally opened the bedroom door and found the victims, according to his father, 37-year-old Romeo Chuc, Deisy Garcia's uncle.
"He opened the door and saw my niece on the floor," Chuc said. "The two babies were covered with a blanket."
Garcia adored her daughters, friends said.
"Everywhere she went, she went with the kids. She loved her kids. They were two angels," Villa said.
The motive behind the murders was still unclear, a police spokesman said.
Friends said Garcia was physically and verbally abused by her husband. He even accosted her at Yoselin's baby shower over the summer, Villa added.
''She said she needed some help. She said he had a bad attitude. She was afraid to call the police because she wasn't legal. She needed some help, but she didn't have papers.''
The NYPD had been summoned to the home twice in 2013, including once for an incident involving hair pulling, sources said. But no arrests were made because no one appeared to have been injured or showed any signs of abuse, sources said.
News of the murders shocked those who knew the family.
"This is the work of the devil," Villa said.
With reporting by Tom Liddy.
