NEW YORK (1010 WINS) — A man NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch described as a “violent recidivist” with a history of “mental health interactions” with the NYPD was charged with the murder of 14-year-old Caleb Rijos in the Bronx, authorities said at a press conference Saturday.
Waldo Mejia, 29, is being charged with second-degree murder, first-degree manslaughter and second-degree criminal possession of a weapon, Bronx District Attorney Darcel Clark said. He is awaiting arraignment.
Officials said that Mejia had four unsealed arrests, including a criminal mischief charge from when he stabbed a neighbors’ doorbell camera, burglary and criminal possession of a weapon after being discovered with a knife.
Caleb Rijos, a resident of the Mitchel Houses in Mott Haven, was stabbed to death near his home at 300 East 138th St. at about 9:25 a.m. on Friday, police said.
Surveillance footage shows Rijos standing along on the sidewalk, making his way to school at the Bronx Leadership Academy, when a perpetrator approaches and immediately stabs him twice in the chest before fleeing the scene.
The knife pierced Rijos’ heart and lungs, NYPD Chief of Detective Joseph Kenny said. After he was wounded, the teen fled his attacker and collapsed between two cars.
“You know he called his father and told his father that he couldn’t breathe, and that he was scared,” Clark said. “And his father heard him dying. This murder is a singular—it is unfathomable to think about the level of this tragedy.”
New Yorkers came to Rijos’ aid and flagged down a nearby EMS vehicle. Despite being transported to the NYC Health + Hospitals/Lincoln within six minutes of the stabbing, he could not be saved.
Following the murder, detectives obtained video and photographs of the suspect and delivered them to all NYPD officers via cellphone, Kenny said. An officer assigned to the transit bureau recognized the suspect from another stabbing that took place on Sunday, Jan. 5.
In that incident, a 38-year-old man was walking down the stairs to enter the Third Avenue–138th Street subway station when a suspect approached him from behind and stabbed him once in the left arm.
The victim was transported to a local hospital where he received several stitches to close his wound. Police are still investigating the incident.
Detectives recognized the similarities between the cases and believe they are connected and were committed by the same perpetrator, Kenny said.
Police released surveillance images of the suspect on Friday and Kenny described the suspect as a man with a slim build from 6 foot 1 inch to 6 foot 3 inches tall.
From the information gathered, police were able to identify Mejia as a person of interest in the case. When officers found him, he was wearing the same black jacket, gray pants and black sneakers with a white stripe as the murder suspect.
At the time of his arrest, Kenny said that Mejia was found in possession of a bloody knife and white gloves that were also worn during the murder.
“A 14-year-old boy is dead, a family is devastated, a city is in mourning, and the systems that we have in place to deal with repeat offenders and individuals with severe mental health issues continue to fail us,” Tisch said.
Clark noted that the Bronx District Attorney’s Office Violence Response Team and Crime Victims Assistance Unit has contacted the victim’s family to aid them in the wake of the tragic loss.
She, like Tisch, lamented about the system in place to handle repeat offenders, especially those struggling with mental health issues.
“We need more resources to hold people accountable when they commit crimes and it’s related to their mental illness,” Clark said. “It’s not enough to secure facilities for them to get the help they need for the mental illness and to hold them accountable for the crimes that they’re charged for.”
Bronx Rep. Ritchie Torres released a statement Saturday afternoon in which he referred to Mejia’s criminal past and called attention to flaws in the criminal justice system
“A 14–year old is dead because the State of New York failed him,” Torres said. “The blood of the innocent and the young are in the hands of New York’s criminal justice system, which insists on releasing repeat stabbers.”