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The killer and the victim lived together in a two-bedroom basement apartment on 65th Avenue.
By Forum Staff
A 73-year-old Fresh Meadows man, who pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter in December 2016, was sentenced to 15 years for the July 2016 bludgeoning death of his 61-year-old live-in girlfriend. The defendant was identified as Chitwah Tse, 73, of 158-10 65th Avenue in the Fresh Meadows section of Queens.
victim, Huizhen Zhan, 61,
couple lived on 65 th Avenue in apartment with third individual.
The Tse and his girlfriend, 61-year-old Huizhen Zhan, shared a basement apartment at 158-10 65th Avenue in Fresh Meadows with a roommate. Authorities revealed that around 6:00 p.m. on July 31st, the couple’s roommate observed Zahn in their shared kitchen. She was on the phone and told the person at the other end that she had to go because she was cooking dinner. Around two hours later, at 8 pm, she called the person back and asked them to give her a wake-up call at 5:30.
The roommate also reported that around midnight, she heard loud banging coming from the couples bedroom.
According to criminal charges in the case, the person on the phone with Ms. Zahn the night before, received a phone call from Tse’s cell phone at approximately 5:28 a.m. on August 1, 2016, who said, “We are awake. Goodbye.” The individual never spoke to Ms. Zhan.
Later that morning, around 9:15 the defendant was observed by the roommate to be on his cell phone and leaving the house.
That evening, around 6 pm, Tse met with two relatives in the Chinatown area. He expressed his remorse to them and said he didn’t know if he would ever see them again.
About an hour later, the 107th Precinct received a call from a man identifying himself as Garo Kapikian, Esq. He told police that a new client had walked into his office earlier in the afternoon and informed him that there was a corpse in the basement apartment of 158-10 65 Avenue in Fresh Meadows. The attorney identified his client as Chitwah Tse.
Police responded to the address and found a body lying on the bed in the rear bedroom. The lifeless body of Ms. Zahn was covered with a blood-soaked sheet, the walls and the ceiling spattered with blood, broken glass strewn over the bed.
The chief Medical Examiner ruled the cause of Ms. Zhan’s death to be a homicide due to blunt force trauma to the head.
Shortly after, on August 2nd around 2 pm, members of the New York City Police Department’s Hostage Negotiation Team went to the law offices of Mr. Kapikian at 401 Broadway in Manhattan, in response to a call that Tse had climed out a window on the 22nd floor and was threatening to jump.
Authorities managed to pull him from the railing and get him inside the building. He was rushed to Bellevue Hospital and soon afterwards charged in the death of Ms. Zhan.
District Attorney Brown said, “In pleading guilty to manslaughter, the defendant admitted to brutally killing the 61-year-old woman whom he had shared his life with… “The defendant will likely spend the rest of his life incarcerated for this heinous crime.”
