A 33-year-old man was arrested for attacking and killing his ex-girlfriend, who named him as her attacker before she died. This happened outside her home in Manhattan on Monday morning, police said.
Shirley Rodriguez, 29, had just left her apartment in Washington Heights and was on her way to work around 5:30 a.m. Her attacker, who was hiding between two parked cars, ambushed her, said NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny.
Rodriguez was stabbed in her torso, back, neck, arms, and face in an attack that lasted more than a minute, Kenny said.
She tried to fight off her attacker, who was eventually chased away by two witnesses while others called 911.
Despite her injuries, Rodriguez managed to get back into her building lobby and used the intercom to call her father, who she lived with, police said.
“Her father came down to help her. As she was dying, she told him, ‘Ty did this,’” Kenny said.
Rodriguez was taken to Harlem Hospital but couldn’t be saved.
Her ex-boyfriend, Tyquane Jemmott, was found Monday afternoon hiding at his uncle’s house in the Bronx, Kenny said.
Rodriguez and Jemmott had broken up last week after a two-year relationship during which there were two domestic incident reports, but no arrests were made, the police chief said.
Charges against Jemmott are pending. He has one prior arrest for criminal mischief in Midtown in November 2023.