A 33-year-old man was arrested for butchering his ex-girlfriend, who named him as her alleged killer before she died in the ambush attack outside her Manhattan home Monday morning, police said.
Shirley Rodriguez, 29, had just left her Washington Heights apartment building and was on her way to work around 5:30 a.m. when her attacker, who was hiding between two parked cars, struck, NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said Tuesday.
Rodriguez was stabbed in her torso, back, neck, arms and face in the vicious crime that lasted for more than a minute, Kenny said.
The woman desperately tried to fight off her attacker, who was eventually chased away by two witnesses as others on the street called 911.
Despite her injuries, Rodriguez stumbled back into her building lobby and buzzed her father, with whom she lived with, on the intercom, police said.
“The father comes down to aid his daughter. As she’s dying, she tells him that ‘Ty did this,’” Kenny said.
Rodriguez was taken to Harlem Hospital but could not be saved.
Her ex-boyfriend, Tyquane Jemmott, was caught Monday afternoon hiding out at his uncle’s house in the Bronx, Kenny said.
Rodriguez and Jemmott had broken up last week after a two-year relationship in which two domestic incident reports had been filed, but did not lead to any arrests, the police chief said.
Charges against Jemmott are pending. He has one prior arrest for criminal mischief in Midtown in November 2023.
