Rajwantie Baldeo was stabbed to death by her husband on the corner of 103rd Ave. and 124th St. in Richmond Hill.
(FACEBOOK)
Police arrested a Queens man after he stabbed his 46-year-old wife to death — nearly decapitating her in front of witnesses on a Queens street corner early Monday, police said.
Prem Rampersaud, 50, surprised his wife Rajwantie Baldeo who had just left work at the corner of 103rd Ave. and 124th St. in Richmond Hill around 12:15 a.m. — confronting her about a man she had met online, authorities said.
Rampersaud slapped Baldeo across the face and choked her, before pulling out a long kitchen knife and stabbing her in the chest, shoulder and both hands, police said.
He then began cutting at his wife’s neck, police sources said.
Off-duty NYC correction officer fatally shot in Brooklyn
Two witnesses who were passing by at the time told police they tried to stop the man, but that he didn’t even acknowledge them.
Rampersaud, kneeling down on one knee, kept on sawing, sources said. The witness told cops they could hear the blade scraping bone.
Reached by phone, the victim’s daughter told the Daily News that her father was a monster who often made ominous threats.
“My dad was a very bad person. My mom didn’t deserve to die like that,” said Shalini Ronaldo Ramjiawan, 30.
Mass. teen arrested in classmate slaying, victim was decapitated
“He would say things. He always threatened he would kill mom,” she added.
Shortly before police and paramedics arrived, Rampersaud dropped the knife and walked away. He was taken into custody by cops a few blocks away on Liberty Ave.
His wife, whose name was not immediately released, was rushed to Jamaica Hospital, but could not be saved.
Rampersaud was arrested and charged with murder and criminal possession of a weapon.
He told cops he became enraged after his daughter showed him a Facebook photo of Baldeo with another man.
Despite being married for three decades, the couple had only lived together a short while. Rampersaud had given his wife $9,000 to leave Guyana and move into his Jamaica home about a year ago, police said.
Baldeo apparently kept the marriage a secret among her peers.
Co-workers at The Oasis restaurant on Liberty Ave. near 123rd St., where the slain woman worked, said she tried to avoid him at all costs and referred to Rampersaud only as her ex-husband.
“All I know is she said that if her ex-husband ever comes in looking for her, to not tell him she works here,” recalled Nazia Rajpaul, 25, a waitress at the restaurant.
Such a scenario became reality this past Friday afternoon, when a drunk Rampersaud showed up asking for her by the name of Christie.
"He showed up mad drunk," Rajpaul said. “I wasn’t afraid, but he kept asking over and over for her. I just kept telling him she's not here."
Ramjiawan said Rampersaud was known to attack Baldeo when drunk.
The restaurant’s manager Shashi Sherman, 49, said he had to throw Rampersaud out.
"He had to be thrown out ... I just told him to get out of here," said Sherman.
The woman wasn’t at the restaurant at the time, but when she arrived later that night and learned of the incident, she was incredulous.
"Her reaction was that she couldn't believe he would do that, that he would turn up drunk at noon looking for her," Rajpaul said.
Police sources said Rampersaud visited a 99-cent store a day or two after that episode and purchased the kitchen knife he used to kill his wife.
Rampersaud’s landlord in Jamaica, where he was staying with a friend, said he was constantly paranoid Baldeo was cheating on him.
"He was always going on about how she was cheating on him,” said the landlord, who declined to give her name.
“He was jealous and delusional. They were getting a divorce.”
The landlord said Rampersaud had threatened murder in the past.
Rampersaud told her he would “kill (Baldeo) and then kill himself ... if she's not going to have me back he’s going to kill her so no one came have her,” the woman said.
http://www.nydailynews.com/new...er-article-1.2899035
