By Carol Tannenhauser
A second suspect is being sought in the murder of Maria Hernandez, the 74-year-old woman who was found dead in her W. 83rd Street apartment on Wednesday, January 18, police told WSR on Tuesday morning. “A second individual was seen entering the building with Mackey,” a spokesperson said. “We can’t speculate about whether that means there was a witness or a surveillance camera,” she added. Apparently, a surveillance photo (right) was taken later of the second suspect.
“Mackey” is Lashawn Mackey, 47, from Brooklyn, who was picked up on Saturday, January 21 and charged with murder, attempted murder, and two counts of burglary. “The motive was robbery,” a police spokesperson told the Rag at the time.
Ms. Hernandez was found by her sister, with her hands and feet tied, lying face down in her bedroom, the New York Post reported. “The residence had been ransacked. The Medical Examiner determined [she] died of asphyxia.”
Earlier, police said there were no signs of trauma other than Ms. Hernandez’s bound hands and feet, but the Post reported “she was found with fractures and bruising on her body.”
Scant details are available about Mackey’s arrest, other than “a search warrant was executed at his residence,” the police spokesperson added. “I don’t know how, but they got him. That was a quick turnaround!”
Another call to DCPI (the NYPD press office) on Sunday, January 22 yielded further information about Lashawn Mackey. “Mackey was arrested in 1999 for attempted murder and was off the grid [possibly in prison] until around 2021,” spokesperson said. “He was arrested again in August, 2022, for burglary. That was around the same time that he worked for a couple of months at Ms. Hernandez’s building last summer, as part of a post-incarceration work-release program. So, he had previous knowledge of the building.”
We will keep you posted on this latest development.
Anyone with information in regard to this incident is asked to call the NYPD’s Crime Stoppers Hotline at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477) or for Spanish, 1-888-57-PISTA (74782). The public can also submit their tips by logging onto the CrimeStoppers website at https://crimestoppers.nypdonline.org/ or on Twitter @NYPDTips.
All calls are strictly confidential.
A “post-incarceration work-release program” should be bagging groceries (I’ve watched Shawshank a few too many times), picking up trash on the street, construction, or something else with minimal interaction with other people, particularly for someone with his history of violent crime.
Our government is debating useless topics rather than making common sense changes that actually impact people. Whoever thought this was OK was not thinking.
Try him in court. If found guilty, lock him up with no parole. Sounds unreal in today’s UWS law & order DA, but lets hope so.
Cameras all over the place. The picture in the story was taken by an overhead camera but has with as much detail as a picture from a professional photographer. This is great.
It says the motive was robbery. But of course Mackey had a motive to kill her. She’d be able to ID him.
He was planning to murder her from the start as he knew she would id him. This is beyond disturbing – the cold-blooded plan to murder an innocent older woman.
I’m sure he wouldn’t have stopped just at this murder.
From his hat, we can atleast tell that like Mackey, he too has dreadlocks. Someone knows him and needs to do the right thing for society, but most importantly for Maria. TURN HIM IN!!
Whoever hired him to work in a building like that?
Whoever hired him is responsible for the murder of Maria Hernandez !
I hope these crimes somehow impact the families of these perpetrators. And I don’t want to hear about what nice “boys” they were.