The teen accused of randomly stabbing a Queens mom on her way to work freely admitted to detectives that he had attacked the stranger and even said he was “guilty,” Queens prosecutors said Friday.
When questioned by NYPD detectives and shown the video of Monday’s horrific attack, Luis Emmanuel Valencia Ponce told investigators, “seeing the footage, knowing how it looked, I was guilty,” Queens Assistant District Attorney Isabelle Dudek said at his Thursday night arraignment.
“If I’m being honest with you, I don’t remember running towards her, but I do remember running after her,” Ponce, 18, told detectives. “When I saw the video, unfortunately, it just came to my head.”
The teen is accused of storming up to his 30-year-old victim as she made her way to a bus stop near 23rd Ave. and 94th St. in East Elmhurst at about 6:15 a.m. Monday.
“The (victim), she was walking to a bus stop. After (she) was at the corner waiting to cross the street, (Ponce) came up behind her and repeatedly stabbed her in the back,” Dudek said at the arraignment, giving a blow-by-blow account of the incident. “Then the defendant is seen on video surveillance moving a few feet away as the complainant runs into the intersection, and the defendant then, for a second time, proceeds to run to the complainant and again, stab her repeatedly throughout the body.”
Surveillance video obtained by the Daily News shows Ponce stabbing the stranger in two bursts, knifing her in the back and left arm. After stabbing his victim once, he steps away, then returns and appears to stab her again.
“Thank God I’m still here,” the victim, who didn’t want to be identified, told the Daily News from her hospital bed. “I’m surprised this happened to me. I don’t have problems with anyone. I’m a calm person. I’m shy. I don’t socialize like that.”
Ponce ditched the knife, which was found a few feet away from the scene, covered in the victim’s blood.
EMS rushed the victim to Elmhurst Hospital Center where she was treated for a punctured lung and four stab wounds that required 11 stitches, prosecutors said.
Cops charged Ponce with attempted murder, assault and weapons possession. Queens Criminal Court Judge Maria Gonzalez ordered the teen held without bail.
Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz called the teen’s actions “a calculated act of violence.”
“The random and senseless nature of this attack is deeply unsettling to every New Yorker,” Katz said. “As alleged (the teen) followed a 30-year-old woman before stabbing her multiple times without any prior interaction.”
At the behest of his father, Ponce surrendered to authorities early Thursday morning, but not before he tried to get onto a flight to his native Peru at JFK Airport. He was grabbed by airport cops for trying to get onto the plane without a boarding pass, prosecutors said.
Port Authority police officers released him, but quickly realized he was wanted for the knife attack. They called the NYPD and identified Ponce as a suspect, and the teen surrendered with his father at his side a short time later.
Valencia Ponce lives about four blocks from where the attack took place, cops said. If convicted, he faces up to 25 years in prison.
Ponce’s attorney Michelle Minkin said the teen had just graduated high school and has no criminal history. She did infer that he may have been in the throws of a mental crisis when he attacked his victim and asked a judge to authorize “medical and psychiatric attention” and “other supportive services.”
Minkin said Ponce “received medical and psychiatric attention shortly following the alleged incident.”
“I believe he was not in the right state of mind,” Minkin said about her client. “Once he was able to get the medical attention he needed, the first thing he did was go with his father and surrender to the police precinct,” she said.
Ponce returns to court on March 24.