what to know
- A man has pleaded guilty to murder in connection with the “heinous assault” of a 92-year-old woman who was walking near her Queens home on a cold January night in 2020, the local district attorney said.
- Reeaz Khan, 24, pleaded guilty Tuesday to second-degree murder and first-degree attempted rape. Khan faces 22 years to life in prison on the murder charge and eight years in prison on the attempted rape charge when he is sentenced on July 6.
- Both fell behind a parked car, where they remained out of camera view for 4 to 5 minutes, NBC 4 New York previously reported. After that, the suspect went out alone.
NEW YORK — A man has pleaded guilty to murder in connection with the “heinous assault” of a 92-year-old woman who was walking near her Queens home on a cold January night in 2020, the local district attorney said.
Reeaz Khan, 24, pleaded guilty Tuesday to second-degree murder and first-degree attempted rape. Khan faces 22 years to life in prison on the murder charge and eight years in prison on the attempted rape charge when he is sentenced on July 6.
On January 6, 2020, Khan was seen on surveillance video approaching 92-year-old Maria Fuertes from behind as she was walking down 127th Avenue in the Richmond Hill neighborhood around midnight, according to the charges. The video shows both of them falling to the ground.
Both fell behind a parked car, where they remained out of camera view for 4 to 5 minutes, NBC 4 New York previously reported. After that, the suspect went out alone. According to the charges, around 5 minutes later, Khan is seen in the footage with his pants unbuttoned and running.
A couple of hours later, around 2:14 a.m., Fuertes was found by a passerby who then called 911, the district attorney’s office said, citing the charges.
Fuertes, whose dress was lifted up to her chest, was barely conscious and incoherent when she was taken to a local hospital, where she later died, according to the charges.
Doctors discovered that Fuertes had suffered fractured spine and ribs, bruises to his neck and chest, in addition to other injuries. A subsequent autopsy determined that Fuertes died of blunt force trauma and hypothermia, according to the charges.
Fuertes’s death rocked their tight-knit community. Neighbors say he lived his entire life in the southwestern Queens neighborhood.
“If something like this can happen to an old woman like this, what else is going to happen to any other woman,” neighbor Aneil Ram told NBC New York at the time of Fuertes’s death.
Fuertes was known for her love of cats. Her door was littered with cans of cat food. Neighbors said she was known to go out late at night to buy cat food; some wondered if she had been doing that when she was killed.
“She lived for her cats. She lived for her family, and it’s a very sick thing that happened to her,” Ram said.
The entire community was stunned. Not a few neighbors simply asked: “Why would someone hurt her?”
