Relatives of a woman discovered dead by her son with her neck slashed in the lobby of her Brooklyn apartment building are appealing to the public for help with funeral expenses.
Maria Santos Flores’ family launched a GoFundMe after her teenage son discovered her dead with her throat cut inside the Bay Ridge building Saturday. She was 36.
“Upon arriving home, María Santos Flores was attacked by an unknown assailant who violently took her life, leaving behind two children who depended entirely on her,” the online appeal from the family says in Spanish.
“The costs associated with this situation exceed the family’s budget.”
Santos’ 18-year-old son discovered her body shortly after 9 a.m. just inside the two-story building’s entrance near 85th St. and Fourth Ave. when he went to open the door for his aunt, who is Santos’ sister, the victim’s devastated husband told the Daily News.
“Her sister came to visit. When he opened the door he saw her on the floor at the bottom of the stairs and they called the ambulance,” Santos’s husband, Santos Hernandez, 35, said.
The husband said he was at work in a warehouse when his sister-in-law called and told him about his wife’s death. Hernandez said he was struggling to understand what happened to his wife, saying police had not told him anything.
There have been no arrests.
Santos, who was married to Hernandez for three years, lived on the second floor of the building. She had two children, an 18-year-old son and a 14-year-old daughter. Her son was too distraught to speak on Sunday.
A neighbor said he heard a single scream in the building about an hour before the discovery. He described the victim as “a good woman.”
Hernandez and neighbors said Santos was a bartender at a tavern in Sunset Park.
Donors to the website had raised nearly $3,000 of the site’s $12,000 goal by Monday afternoon.