The estranged boyfriend of the Bronx woman killed when she and her infant daughter were pushed off their 15th-floor balcony is now wanted for her murder.
Angel Carrasco, 31, should be considered “ARMED AND DANGEROUS,” an NYPD wanted poster warns.
Meanwhile, the 8-month-old girl’s condition has improved from critical to stable and she’s expected to survive, cops said. The mother’s body apparently cushioned the impact her baby suffered after Ramirez held her daughter close as they plunged.
The shocking slaying, the climax to an acrimonious relationship, happened 3:38 a.m. Tuesday when Nathaly Ramirez, 23, holding her baby, slammed into the ground outside her building on Olivnville Ave. near Allerton Ave. after she was thrown from her balcony, police said.
Carrasco had been arrested twice earlier this year for clashes with the victim in her apartment, according to police sources.
On Jan. 5, Ramirez told police Carrasco hit her and he was arrested for misdemeanor assault. Just three days later he was arrested again for a case involving her, but the case was later sealed and it wasn’t clear Wednesday what he had been charged with.
Carrasco’s only other arrest was for pot possession more than a decade ago, the sources said.
Surveillance footage obtained by the Daily News shows Carrasco, wearing a tan hoodie with the hood up and a backpack, walking slowly away from the scene with his head down about 3:45 a.m. — just as an ambulance and a police car arrive with flashing lights and sirens.
Carrasco is described as 5-foot-9 and 150 pounds with blue eyes and brown hair.
Police rushed the infant to Jacobi Medical Center, where she was initially listed in critical condition but was stable as of Wednesday afternoon, police said. Her mother, taken by medics to the same hospital, could not be saved.
An upstairs neighbor recounted Ramriez’s final minutes, arguing with a man police say is her estranged boyfriend a short time before she was killed.
“They were both on the terrace,” said Nancy Morales, 69. “She was holding the baby. She told him to leave her alone. She was telling him, ‘Stop! You’re scaring the baby!’
“He said, ‘You want me to do it? You want me to do it?’ I just said a prayer and went to sleep.”
Barry Williams / New York Daily News
Nathaly Ramirez was killed and a baby girl was critically hurt in a plunge from a 15th-floor balcony (circled) in an apartment building on Olinville Ave. in the Bronx early Tuesday. (Barry Williams / New York Daily News)
Morales recalled overhearing Ramirez on the phone in January confiding in someone about her troubled relationship.
“She wanted to get away from here. She wanted to get away from him,” Morales recalled. “She said, ‘I can’t take it anymore.’”
Rosaly Santana, a longtime friend of Ramirez, said she felt her relationship with her estranged boyfriend was “not stable,” but respected her privacy.
“I didn’t get into details with what was happening,” Santana, 45, admitted. “I just offered to help her in any way I could.
“I never asked questions. But she knew that I would be there for her, no matter what,” she said, still overwhelmed by Ramirez’s death.
“I’m in shock, disbelief,” Santana said. “I feel like nobody deserves to go through certain things, and I feel like she definitely did not deserve this. Just a person with so much life in her. It still hasn’t sunk in that she’s gone.”
Neighbors said they had heard the pair quarreling many times before.
“There was always a lot of drama. They were always fighting,” said a neighbor on the victim’s floor who wished to remain anonymous. “She’d lock him out and he’d kick the door in.”
Rebecca White / New York Daily News
The mother of victim Nathaly Ramirez collapses outside her apartment on Olinville Ave. in the Bronx after learning of her daughter’s death on Tuesday. (Rebecca White / New York Daily News)
A 66-year-old neighbor gave her name only as Judy said the young mother would go quiet around her boyfriend.
“When he would be around her, she would not talk,” said Judy.
Ramirez went to Bronx Leadership Academy before studying psychology at Baruch College, according to her LinkedIn page. She also interned at Lishawn’s Consulting, a Brooklyn-based business management consulting company.
“It is such a loss for my team and I,” said Lishawn Alexander, owner of Lishawn’s Consulting. “Words cannot truly express my sorrow. Ms. Ramirez was a team player in its truest sense.”
Anyone with information on Carrasco’s whereabouts is asked to call Crime Stoppers at (800) 577-TIPS. All calls will be kept confidential.