By Gus Saltonstall
Ana Asencio, 84, was found unresponsive by police officers in her West 93rd Street apartment near Columbus Avenue on July 17, 2023, an NYPD spokesperson told West Side Rag on Thursday. She was pronounced dead at the scene.
At the time, there was no “criminal determination” related to her death, the spokesperson said.
However, in recent weeks, Asencio’s death was determined by the chief medical examiner to have been a homicide. Police and the chief medical examiner’s office did not explain why the homicide determination had only just been made. NYPD told the New York Daily News that Asencio was found with bruising to her neck and injuries to her head.
No arrests have been made, but police also told the Daily News that Asencio had been a victim of elder abuse. A longtime public school teacher, she lived in the apartment with her son.
“She didn’t deserve this,” Migdalia Rodriguez, 72, a resident of the same Upper West Side building told the Daily News. “She wasn’t in her right mind but she was a lovely lady.”
Subscribe to WSR’s free email newsletter here.
If you find me dead, with bruising to my neck and injuries to my head, please humbly suggest to the authorities that I was killed, in case they don’t think of it.
So, where is the son in all of this? What took the NYPD so very very long? Anybody who sees a person with bruising to the neck and injuries to head immediately know there has been an attack on the person. Maybe NYPD needs glasses? Or do they just assume an old lady always dies naturally?
The son must be the #1 suspect. Maybe he could not handle his mother’s mental decline . I just read the article in the NY Daily News via the internet link thoughtfully provided by WSR reporter Gus Saltonstal.
>Or do they just assume an old lady always dies naturally?
Those responsible for assumption should read Dostoevsky’s “Crime and Punishment”!
No one assumed anything. You need proof to make an accusation of a crime. A bruise on an elderly person isn’t uncommon.
Crime and Punishment still haunts me years after reading it. Highly recommended, but beware…