Deisy Garcia loved her daughters.
The 21-year-old mother had just celebrated the first birthday of her youngest daughter, Yoselin, and the baby and her 2-year-old, Daniela, were, friends and family said, her pride and joy. On Facebook, she shared photo after photo of her little ones – in tiny red red dresses and matching shoes, cupping hands to smiling faces, in their mother’s lap.
There should have been many more photos, friends said – of birthdays and school dances and weddings. But there will never again be a photo taken of Deisy Garcia, Yoselin, and Daniela: The three were murdered at their Jamaica home last Saturday, when her husband allegedly used at least four knives to stab his wife and two children to death, according to police. The 21-year-old woman, a native of Guatemala who met her husband, Miguel Mejia-Ramos, a 28-year-old originally from Mexico, when the two were living in the United States.
“Deisy was beautiful; she was a really good dancer,” a friend, who did not wish to be identified, said through a translator. “She was a great mother. The girls were everything to her.”
Mejia-Ramos, who lived with Garcia and his two daughters, as well as other family members, in an apartment on Sutphin Boulevard, was arrested in Texas Monday night, the NYPD said. According to police, he was driving a 2001 Chevrolet van with New York plates in Texas when he was stopped by the U.S. Marshals Service.
The man, who reportedly had self-inflicted stab wounds, was taken to a hospital in Texas for treatment and was arraigned Tuesday. He was being held without bail and is expected to be extradited to New York, authorities said.
The bodies of Garcia, who was a member of a dance group at her church in Jamaica and a student at York College, Yoselin, and Daniela were discovered by Garcia’s 12-year-old nephew, the NYPD said. Garcia was found on the floor, and her children were discovered wrapped in blankets on their beds, officials said.
Other published reports stated that Garcia had told friends that her husband had abused her. According to the same reports, police said they responded to two domestic violence calls at the family’s home, but no arrests were made in connection to those incidents.
Garcia’s uncle told the New York Times that Mejia-Ramos had seemed like a “‘normal’” guy but said that over the past few months “‘something happened with the husband.’”
