The name and a photo of a suspect wanted for slashing his ex-girlfriend and stabbing to death a man visiting her Queens apartment were released by the NYPD Monday.
Cops are asking the public’s help finding Maykoll Lanuza Morales, wanted for the slaying inside a Richmond Hill apartment building last month.
Lanuza Morales, 40, allegedly slashed his 32-year-old ex-girlfriend and stabbed Miguel Perez, 41, in the chest inside his ex’s new apartment on 86th Ave. near 101st St. on April 12. Perez was just visiting the woman’s apartment when he was killed, his family says.
“Right now, my heart is broken,” Perez’s mother, Blanca Perez, 69, told the Daily News shortly after his slaying. “I love my son from the bottom of my heart.”
Police sources say the stabbing was motivated by a love triangle involving the two victims and the killer.
Courtesy of Maria Perez
Miguel Perez, 41, was stabbed to death in Queens on April 12. (Courtesy of Maria Perez)
The slain man’s parents own and live in a building about a mile-and-a-half away from where the killing happened. Blanca Perez says the wounded woman and suspect were her tenants but the wounded woman moved out and into the new apartment about two weeks before the slaying, leaving the suspect, who is the father of her kids, behind.
The wounded woman told cops the killer knocked on her door about 2:20 a.m., pushed his way inside, slashed her on the forearm and plunged the knife into Miguel Perez’s chest. She described the slain man as her boyfriend to cops, police sources said.
Miguel Perez’s mother says the woman and her ex had lived for 10 years in the Perez family’s building. Before Blanca Perez learned of the stabbing, she heard someone accessing the apartment where the suspect lives.
“I heard someone running up the stairs,” she said. “After a while, he ran out very fast, so fast. In 10 years, I’ve never heard someone running on the stairs like that.”
Cops came a short time later to tell her that her son was dead. She hasn’t seen the suspect — her tenant — since.
Police said no weapon has been recovered.
Theodore Parisienne / New York Daily News
A 41-year-old man was stabbed to death and a woman slashed inside a Queens apartment building on 86th Ave. near 101st St. in Richmond Hill on April 12th. (Theodore Parisienne / New York Daily News)
Miguel Perez worked as a forklift operator for a supply company and also put his certified mechanic skills to work fixing up cars with his father.
Larissa Mendes, 41, the mother of two of Miguel Perez’s teenage children, was shocked by his murder.
“He was doing very well, working hard, taking care of his parents,” Mendes said. Now “he won’t be there for his kids … They have their whole lives ahead of them and so did he.”
Miguel Perez had been worried something could happen to him.
“I have text messages where he said, ‘If something happens to me, don’t worry, I took care of everything for the kids,’” Mendes said. “I asked him why he was speaking like that. Now it seems like he was preparing me.”
Miguel Perez’s family fears the suspected killer may have fled to his native Nicaragua.
“Justice needs to be served,” said Maria Perez, Miguel’s sister. “We will never feel at peace … He did this while he was living at my parents house and no one has seen him at all.”
Anyone with information on the suspect is asked to call Crime Stoppers at (800) 577-TIPS. All calls will be kept confidential.