She Answered a Friend’s Call for Help and Paid With Her Life

NEW YORK — It started with a call for help.

Lisa Marie Velasquez was visiting her relatives in the Melrose housing project when her telephone pinged. A distraught friend said her boyfriend was beating her in an apartment a few miles to the east in the Bronx. Grabbing a bag, Velasquez left in a rush.

Velasquez, 25, did what many women would do for a friend in an abusive relationship, and like others who intervene to stop domestic violence, her Samaritan’s instinct put her in harm’s way. She ended up being a victim herself.

For her, however, going to her friend’s aid was more than just a principled decision. It was deeply personal. As a girl, she had witnessed her mother’s gruesome murder at the hands of a romantic partner, and the trauma had instilled in her a desire to protect others.

“She had to leave because her friend was in danger,” Velasquez’s aunt, Jacqueline Perez, said.

In the end, the urge to save her friend led Velasquez to a fate similar to her mother’s. She walked into the middle of a domestic battle and was bludgeoned to death by her friend’s boyfriend, prosecutors said. The couple is accused of then dismembering her body in a bathtub with a machete and leaving her remains in two parks, wrapped in plastic bags.

Daquan Wheeler, 31, and his girlfriend, Ciara J. Martinez, 30, were arrested late Wednesday and formally charged in Bronx Criminal Court on Thursday with murder and other crimes related to disposing of Velasquez’s body. A judge ordered them held without bail pending a grand jury. In life, Velasquez was a vivacious young woman with full cheeks and lush hair. Every Saturday she played softball in a league, donning the red T-shirt and cap of her team, a uniform she would wear out dancing after games, her family said.

In high school she had been in the ROTC, and had joined the Law Enforcement Explorers program for the New York police, her aunt said. Later she became an auxiliary police officer in the 40th Precinct. Relatives said she was motivated by what had happened to her mother to make the most of her own life.

When Velasquez was 12 years old, her mother, Marilyn Ginel, was stabbed, strangled and beaten to death in their apartment by Robert Coakley, her on-again, off-again companion. Ginel was nine months pregnant at the time. Coakley is still serving 25 years to life in prison for the crime.

“She became more helpful after that, because of what happened,” said Perez, 53. “It affected her, but she never thought that would happen to her.”

In the past few years, Velasquez had lived in a series of apartments and had moved back home with her grandmother in between. She had held a succession of jobs, including a recent stint working in retail at a Modell’s Sporting Goods shop in the Bronx. It was at work, Perez said, that Velasquez had met Martinez.

Neighbors of Martinez and Wheeler said the couple had lived in an apartment in a two-story brick building on Longfellow Avenue for around three months with their 5-year-old daughter. It was not a quiet time. “They fight every single day, they scream and yell at each other all the time,” said one woman in an adjoining building, who declined to give her name for fear of her children’s safety.

Another neighbor said Martinez had bruises on her arm and appeared medicated earlier this month when she came over to browse at a garage sale. Martinez had told neighbors that she and Wheeler had recently lived in a homeless shelter, and that she worked days and he worked nights. His family said he worked in building maintenance.

Dermot Shea, chief of detectives, said officers had responded to at least four complaints of domestic violence at the couple’s apartment.

Wheeler and Martinez also had criminal records. He had served prison time for a 2008 attempted murder conviction in the Bronx and was on parole for an attempted burglary conviction in Brooklyn. She had been convicted of robbery in 2010 in Queens and had gone to prison for 3 1/2 years.

On Aug. 21, Velasquez arrived at the apartment in the evening to find Martinez alone, battered and bruised, police said. Wheeler had left with the little girl.

Around 2 a.m., Velasquez dialed 911 on her cellphone and reported that Wheeler had taken the couple’s daughter in what she claimed was a kidnapping, the police said. Shea said police officers responded and wrote up a report. When Wheeler returned later, without the couple’s daughter, he became enraged.

“He gets angry that 911 was called,” one investigator said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss an open case. “He bashes her in the head, kills her, and tells the girlfriend, ‘You’re going to help me cut her up and dump her.'”

Investigators said Wheeler threatened to kill Martinez and her child if she refused.

It took time for detectives to connect the dismembered body found in two parks to Velasquez’s disappearance.

On Aug. 24, a seasonal parks worker came across two black contractor bags in Crotona Park. In one bag was the head and naked torso of a woman down to the waist, with the arms hacked off below the shoulders. In the second bag, police found the rest of her torso, from the waist down to the knees. The cuts, according to an investigator, “were not very clean.” The body had no tattoos and dental records proved fruitless in identifying the body, leaving investigators at a loss.

On Tuesday evening, three passers-by discovered a woman’s limbs in another contractor bag on the shoreline of Barretto Point Park in Hunts Point, briefly sparking concerns that a serial killer was at work.

It was only after the Police Department released a sketch of the victim on Aug. 25 and appealed for the public’s help did they determine that the body parts in both locations belonged to Velasquez.

Ten people called in to the CrimeStoppers line, including one who said the drawing looked like Velasquez, the police said. Her family had created “missing” flyers for Lisa and posted them around the Melrose Houses and on social media.

Once detectives had Velasquez’s name, they unearthed from police records the 911 call she had made from the apartment on Longfellow Avenue. Investigators visited apartment 1F to question Wheeler and Martinez, and immediately grew suspicious.

“They see that the apartment is freshly painted,” the police official said. “There’s cleaning products, and those things raise their antennae a bit.” The police obtained a search warrant and technicians began scouring the apartment for forensic evidence. Investigators said they now believe that Velasquez’s corpse was dismembered in the bathtub.

On Wednesday evening, Wheeler and Martinez were arrested by detectives from the 42nd Precinct detective squad and Bronx Homicide. City child welfare officials placed their daughter in foster care.

For her family, news of Velasquez’s killing provoked a familiar pain. “This is our second time around dealing with this, it’s worse with my niece,” Velasquez’s aunt said in a quavering voice outside the Melrose Houses. “I never in this lifetime imagined it would be worse than her mother’s death.” On Thursday evening, several blocks from the courthouse, relatives, friends and neighbors of Velasquez gathered for a candlelight vigil on the walkway outside the high-rise in the Melrose Houses where her family lived.

Mourners took turns lighting colored prayer candles placed outside the building’s entrance, spelling out Lisa, and exchanging hugs beside a photo collage that was affixed to a brick wall with a handwritten message: “Rest In Peace Sweet Angel from your Family and Friends.”

“I was not blood-related to Lisa but I loved her like a niece,” said Lisa Rivera, a family friend, who called police to report Velasquez missing. “She was loving. She was nurturing. She is going to be missed.”