Police charged 56-year-old Francisco Perez with stabbing his older brother Luis Gonzalez to death in their apartment at 58 West 105th Street Thursday night. Police were called at 9:29 p.m. and Gonzalez, 63, was found on the floor of the apartment with knife wounds to the torso. Police recovered a knife at the scene.
Perez was charged with second-degree murder. It’s the first recorded murder on the Upper West Side this year.
Perez had ongoing mental issues, family members told the Daily News.
According to relatives, Perez was taken to Metropolitan Hospital recently — after threatening to kill his brother.
“He is seriously mentally ill,” Deleon said of her brother-in-law. “He has a psychiatric record and was put into Metropolitan Hospital only a few days ago. He said he was going to kill Luis and they still let him out.”
The brothers moved to the block from Puerto Rico with their grandmother when Gonzalez was just a teenager.
Gonzalez, neighbors told the News, was a well-liked neighborhood figure who “was always outside the laundromat on the corner with his boombox, talking to his friends.”
Image via Google Streetview.
Tragic.
difficult to understand
Yes, when it comes to murder I’m definitely against it.
that’s a good start
keep trying and change will come
I’m concerned that when people say things like “He has a psychiatric record.” that such statements will add to stigma. Stigma makes life even more difficult for people who are already suffering. Yes, suffering. If you’ve never experienced mental illness than you may not know just how much of a struggle it can be.
It’s important to note that people who are mentally ill tend to be vulnerable, and more of a danger to themselves than others.
The problem is that the hospital released Mr. Perez before he was ready. Just more proof that mental health “treatment” desperately needs improvement in this country. I think perhaps the hospital should be sued.
Sued? Why is it that many, if not most NY-er’s 1st instinct in most everything is how they will benefit by suing? The guy was sick mentally; for that reason, he acted out and killed his brother. Stigma? How about the stigma that is created about lawyers being the slimy ambulance chassers that most find them to be anyway, and the “victims” being the “what’s in it for me” bottom-feeders that they are when people like you instinctively go directly to getting into the presumably deep pockets of others with such asinine reasoning.
You should be sued for such a damning, libelous statement against a medical facility trying to help the mentally ill society that you seemingly don’t want to help, other than pointing out a “payday” for unforeseen tragedies.
“Perhaps they should be sued”. Indeed!
The man who did this is a well-known fixture and was often seen around the neighborhood looking/acting completely disturbed. A few weeks ago he violently kicked a small dog-unprovoked. When police were called – people helped and urged him to flee the scene. The cops did nothing to follow up.
These type of violent crimes do not just happen out of the blue- there are clear warning signs. I can’t help but imagine if he had been arrested weeks ago and sent back to the hospital that things may turned out differently.
Natali- I understand that the mental health system in this country absolutely needs reform, but in this instance he was a major danger to his own family member and to everyone in the neighborhood.
There’s a difference between mental illness and criminal insanity. This man was clearly a monster with multiple arrests and incarcerations. He was a criminal, period. I hate the fact that MANY people abuse the mental health system to obtain benefits and then the system fails the ones that really need thise benefits. A lot of people go to a hospital, say they hear voices or that they are suicidal, just to be admitted and have a place and a bed to sleep in, sometimes for weeks at a time, and they do it week after week. Simply disgusting. I hope this killer ends the rest of his days behind bars. Yup, the rest of his days. Now let me have a cup of coffee and finish reading the newspaper.
“A lot of people go to a hospital, say they hear voices or that they are suicidal, just to be admitted and have a place and a bed to sleep in, sometimes for weeks at a time, and they do it week after week.”
You are having some kind of bizarre visions yourself. As illustrated by this sad case, there’s barely any mental health inpatient care available in NYC, even for people who are plainly dangerous to those around them.
Daniel rants:
“A lot of people go to a hospital, say they hear voices or that they are suicidal, just to be admitted and have a place and a bed to sleep in, sometimes for weeks at a time, and they do it week after week.”
I’m wondering what your evidence is for this? I work for NYC Health + Hospitals and have never heard of anyone doing this for a free bed.
behavioral health issues, as they are now called, are becoming more and more prevalent.
I saw this back in the 90’s while in the Psyche ward for alcoholism back in Chicago. I truly needed the treatment and was brought there by the Chicago Police Department – seems I called 911 too many times for them to shoo birds off my roof that were plotting against me. I am now 25-years sober. As I was winding down my 30-day stint, it was getting Chicago-cold out and we went from 6 of us on the ward, to 14 overnight. Getting to know the newbees, I quickly learned that they had done this before and “hospital-hop” whenever it gets too cold out and the shelters are either full, or they get there too late to be admitted.
God Bless You Brother…you sound like the kind of man we could all learn a lesson from. You seem to be doing much better these days.
Thanks for posting
Sadly neither the federal nor most local state governments have lived up to the promises made during the push to deinstitutionalize mentally ill.
Places were closed down and inpatient mental health beds continue to shrink at alarming rates. Meanwhile the mentally ill haven’t gone any where. They now are just pushed out onto the streets, left for their families to try and cobble together some sort of care, and so forth.
As for why the man in question wasn’t kept in hospital longer; it is easy to arm chair quarter back the decision to discharge. However know this; thanks to court rulings and state laws it is very difficult to keep persons “locked up” against their will today. Judges are often reluctant to commit anyone for more than say a few days or maybe a week or weeks without strong medical advice.
There is also the very sad reality that NYC like elsewhere is losing inpatient psychiatric beds, this goes for both wealthy and poor.
Between closed hospitals you also have consolidation (NYP is beginning to consolidate inpatient mental health at their Westchester hospital IIRC). The places that once took Medicaid, those without insurance and so forth like Saint Vincent’s are closing.
Over the past twenty years or so about fifteen (give or take) hospitals have closed in NYC. Each time that happens all sorts of inpatient beds are gone including mental health.