Photo by Rebecca Lewis
Bronx District Attorney Darcel D. Clark announced on Friday, May 6, that a Bronx man has been sentenced to 27 years to life in prison for the murder and dismemberment of Lisa Marie Velasquez in 2018.
According to the investigation, in the early morning of August 22, 2018, Velasquez, 25, had gone to the apartment that the defendant, Daquan Wheeler, 34, last of 1006 Longfellow Avenue in the Foxhurst section of the South Bronx, shared with co-defendant, Ciara Martinez, the mother of Wheeler’s child. Velasquez’s objective was to help Martinez. During the visit, Wheeler hit Velasquez once in the head with a hammer. She fell to the floor and Martinez tried to convince Wheeler to get her medical attention.
He refused, got on top of the victim, straddled her, and struck her with the hammer at least 14 times. Wheeler then wrapped an electrical cord around her neck and strangled her to make sure she was dead. He then dragged the victim’s body to the bathroom and placed her body in the bathtub.
According to the investigation, Wheeler and Martinez cleaned the bathroom and bedroom, got rid of their clothes, the victim’s clothes, and the towels used to clean up blood, in an effort to conceal the murder. They then went to a hardware store and bought trash bags and a machete. Wheeler dismembered the victim’s body using the machete, placed her remains in trash bags, and together, they left them in Crotona Park and in the water off Barretto Point Park in Hunts Point.
Photo by David Greene
They then went back to the apartment and cleaned and painted the residence. On August 24, 2018, a City Parks’ department worker found the bags containing some of the victim’s remains in Crotona Park and on August 28, 2018, people visiting Barretto Point Park discovered the bags containing the rest of her remains.
Reacting to the sentencing, Clark said in part, “It was a horrifying series of acts against a woman who had come to the aid of her friend. He mercilessly struck the victim with a hammer, then strangled her with a cord. I send my condolences to the victim’s family and loved ones who have been waiting for justice, and hope today’s sentence gives them some measure of peace during this nightmare they are living.”
The district attorney said Wheeler was sentenced by Bronx Supreme Court Justice Margaret Clancy to 25 years to life in prison on second-degree murder, two to four years for tampering with physical evidence, to run consecutive to the murder sentence; and two to four years for concealment of a human corpse, to run concurrently. A jury found the defendant guilty of the charges on April 14, 2022.
Martinez testified under a cooperation agreement and will be sentenced to time served on a misdemeanor charge of conspiracy in the 5th degree on May 10.
Photo by David Greene
The case was prosecuted by L. Newton Mendys, chief of the organized criminal activity bureau, Assistant District Attorney Jordan Jackson of the crime strategies bureau, and Assistant District Attorney Samantha Bibbo of the organized criminal activity bureau, under the supervision of Christine Scaccia, chief of the homicide bureau, and the overall supervision of James Brennan, deputy chief of the trial division, and Theresa Gottlieb, chief of the trial division.
Clark thanked advocate, Ana Pimentel, and clinical therapist, Tanya Jimenez-Ortiz, of the crime victims assistance unit; and Peter Kennedy, chief of the technical investigation bureau, lab director, Selena Ley, and digital forensic examiner, Tina Razack, of the digital forensic laboratory.
She also thanked NYPD Detective Sasha Brugal and NYPD Detective Dominic Robinson of the Bronx homicide squad and the NYPD crime scene unit for their work on the case.
admin
Welcome to the Norwood News, a bi-weekly community newspaper that primarily serves the northwest Bronx communities of Norwood, Bedford Park, Fordham and University Heights. Through our Breaking Bronx blog, we focus on news and information for those neighborhoods, but aim to cover as much Bronx-related news as possible. Founded in 1988 by Mosholu Preservation Corporation, a not-for-profit affiliate of Montefiore Medical Center, the Norwood News began as a monthly and grew to a bi-weekly in 1994. In September 2003 the paper expanded to cover University Heights and now covers all the neighborhoods of Community District 7. The Norwood News exists to foster communication among citizens and organizations and to be a tool for neighborhood development efforts. The Norwood News runs the Bronx Youth Journalism Heard, a journalism training program for Bronx high school students. As you navigate this website, please let us know if you discover any glitches or if you have any suggestions. We’d love to hear from you. You can send e-mails to norwoodnews@norwoodnews.org or call us anytime (718) 324-4998.
English
Arabic
Bengali
Chinese (Simplified)
French
Spanish
This trash writer SILE MOLONEY plagiarized this article. This entire article can be found on the Bronx Criminal Court’s press release section.
Thanks for your comment. The story is indeed based on a press release we received from the Bronx District Attorney’s office on the case in question. We’re on the DA’s distribution list and regularly receive such press releases. They are, after all, used as a tool to announce something that is newsworthy. In the story, we duly attributed all the facts of the case to the investigation carried out by the district attorney’s office, and the quotes, both direct and indirect, to the district attorney, herself. Occasionally, we may, sometimes, have reported previously on a story at the time the crime occurred. When this is the case, we link the previous story for context.
We’re a nonprofit, community news publication with a full-time staff of one, plus three, part-time freelance reporters. We cover what we can with the resources we have. Principally, that includes researching, writing, fact-checking, proof reading and editing stories for both print and online, interviewing sources, covering events, photo resizing, captioning, and cropping, where relevant, website maintenance, social media management, ad sales, ad contract coordination, rolling the actual papers for delivery and delivery itself, among other tasks, and covering a geographical area in which a number of different political jurisdictions overlap and do not neatly fall under one district. [In 2021, between District 11, 14 and 15, we profiled and followed close to 25 different candidates running for office in just the City Council races alone.] That might not seem like a lot but it’s a lot. As such, we don’t have the resources to always send a reporter to cover the courts. However, as a community newspaper, we feel that we are providing at least some level of service to the community by sharing information on the outcomes of legal cases that have been shared with us by official sources i.e. in this case, the Bronx DA’s office.
With legal matters, it’s more prudent not to go off script (for libel and other reasons) and instead, to stick to the facts as presented by official sources (such as the district attorney’s office) while at the same time, ensuring to attribute such facts to her office, which we did. For other types of stories, we do, of course, carry out original reporting, etc. Overall, our stories are a combination of these two approaches, owing to having limited resources but doing our best to keep the community informed on matters of public interest, which is our role. This is particularly so when justice is being served, as justice should always be served in public. You may disagree, of course, and that is your right.
The man killed somebody in such a cruel manner. Why is there no capital punishment for such crimes. He should be executed. At the least he should be sentenced for life without any possibility of release. Where is the deterrence?. No wonder criminals hear “voices” and push people onto subway tracks to kill. A jail time without death provides them food, shelter, entertainment and ironically safety to these thugs.Outside you need to work to get these facilities.The American Society is on a decline.