New York authorities arrested a 47-year-old suspect in the gruesome slaying of an elderly woman found bound and strangled in her Upper West Side apartment Wednesday.
Lashawn Mackey yelled that he was innocent as he was escorted out of the 20th Precinct Saturday.
“I'm innocent and tell them...look for the DNA results at the scene of the crime. Ask them for it. Ask them. Please!,” he said.
Mackey was identified as a “temporary employee” of the building where Maria Hernandez was found dead, with her hands and feet bound in an apparent robbery.
The “very bad guy” as described by a police source was hired to work in the building as part of a program that helps former inmates find jobs.
The 74-year-old victim was described by her neighbors as someone who “got along with everybody. She was really nice.”
“It is sad. It is unfortunate. It's crazy how it went down. I would have never thought, to be honest, that that would happen here – never ever, not here,” one said.
