Queens detectives last week arrested a 34-year-old Corona man accused in the brutal June 11 stabbing death of his ex-wife inside an Elmhurst apartment.
Cops said Maximiliano Lozada viciously pummeled Luz Paulino, 33, at about 10:50 p.m. on June 11, during an argument over their seven-year-old son, who lives in the Dominican Republic. Paulino had just returned from a trip to the Dominican Republic where she visited the boy, police said.
The dispute, at Lozada’s apartment on Hampton Street in Elmhurst, turned deadly when Lozada grabbed a knife and stabbed Paulino multiple times, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said.
Kelly told reporters at the scene that Lozada fled the apartment leaving Paulino, “lying in a hallway bleeding profusely – with a knife next to her”.
Paulino was taken to Elmhurst Hospital Center where she was pronounced dead on arrival.
Law enforcement sources said Lozado left the scene and headed to a local bodega, where he bought two cans of beer.
A worker at the bodega told investigators he was scared by the appearance of a man who bought two cans of Coors Light on the night of the murder, the sources said. The worker told police the man was covered with blood – on his hands, arms and clothing, sources said.
“He apparently paid for the beer with blood stained hands and walked away,” the sources said. “The same man returned to the store moments later and asked the same clerk for three Band Aids. He took the Band Aids and walked out of the store without paying.”
Lozada, who was the focus of a manhunt by Queens police, was arrested on the night of June 15 and charged with murder and criminal possession of a weapon.
—Liz Goff