New York City Nanny Yoselyn Ortega Charged in Stabbing Death of 2 Children
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iStockphoto/Thinkstock(NEW YORK) — The New York Police Department formally charged Upper West Side nanny Yoselyn Ortega with the slaying of two young children with a kitchen knife last month.
“Yoselyn Ortega, age 50, was tonight arrested and charged with two counts each of murder in the first and second degrees in the stabbing deaths on October 25 of two children in her care, Lucia Krim, 6, and her brother, Leo, who would have turned 2 years of age five days later on October 30,” New York Deputy Police Commissioner Paul Browne said in a statement.
Browne, the NYPD’s chief spokesman said that Ortega was “no longer intubated and recuperating from what appeared to be wounds she inflicted on herself at the crime scene.”
Ortega “agreed to talk to New York City detectives this afternoon in a bedside interview at New York Presbyterian Weill Cornell Medical Center, where she had been under police guard since the double homicide in the bathroom of Apartment 2 FG at 587 West 75th St in Manhattan … at 6:06 p.m., Ortega was formerly arrested and charged with murdering both children.”
Ortega, who remains hospitalized and under guard, had resided at 610 Riverside Drive with her teenage son and other relatives, according to Browne.
On Thursday, October 25th, Marina Krim came home around 5:30 p.m. after taking her 3-year-old to a swim class at the YMCA. She arrived home to a dark and quiet apartment and initially thought the nanny had taken the children out.
Upon entering a bathroom, Marina discovered Ortega on the floor and her two other children Lucia and Leo dead in a bathtub filled with blood, authorities said.
It was at that moment that Ortega is believed to have slashed herself, New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said at a press conference following the murders.
Ortega, a naturalized U.S. citizen who was born in the Dominican Republic, worked for the Krim family for two years and had been referred to them by another family, the police commissioner said.
Authorities said the children’s father, a CNBC executive, was on a business trip in San Francisco at the time of the murders. He flew home that night, and police rushed him to his family.
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