Waldo Mejia was arrested in 2015, 2017, 2019 and 2024, in accordance with New York Metropolis police data.
However he was out on the road Friday when 14-year-old Caleb Rijos was stabbed to demise within the Bronx whereas strolling to high school, in accordance with the New York Post.
Mejia, 29, was arrested for the crime Saturday with NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch noting that there was little to smile about.
“Right now, a 14-year old-boy is useless. A household is devastated. A metropolis is in mourning, and the techniques that we’ve in place to take care of repeat offenders and people with extreme psychological well being points proceed to fail us,” Tisch stated.
After being stabbed twice within the chest, Rijos known as his father
“You already know, he known as his father and advised his father that he couldn’t breathe and that he was scared, and his father heard him dying,” Bronx District Lawyer Darcel Clark stated.
“It’s unfathomable to consider the extent of this tragedy,” he stated.
Mejia was arrested by police on a knife cost in 2015, and a gun cost in 2017, earlier than going through housebreaking and arson fees in 2019 after the foyer of a former girlfriend’s constructing was set on hearth. The 2019 fees had been pleaded right down to reckless endangerment, and Mejia was handed a conditional discharge
Expenses in opposition to Mejia didn’t finish there.
In November, he was charged with stabbing a Ring doorbell digital camera. Tisch stated Mejia was launched on his personal recognizance, noting that crime was not one the place Mejia might have been locked up and required to put up bail.
US NEWS
Bronx, New Yorkpic.twitter.com/zXpW0libkM
Waldo Mejia, aged 29, Arrested for Stabbing Demise of 14-year-old Caleb RijosThe Bronx man, recognized as Waldo Mejia, who’s accused of the homicide of the 14-year-old, can be suspected of slashing this 38-year-old man.
The…
— TT (@6002_TT) January 12, 2025
“The established order is simply not working for New Yorkers,” Tisch stated Saturday.
“We do not need a system that places the rights and desires of victims first. And my message to New Yorkers is one thing has to provide,” she stated.
Tisch stated as soon as once more New York Metropolis faces the “brutal, unprovoked killing of a 14-year-old youngster by a profession felony or recidivist again and again, with [a severe] historical past of psychological well being interactions with the NYPD.”
“What number of instances [does] the mayor must hold speaking about this earlier than one thing modifications? I’m hopeful one thing will change. Let this be a name to motion,” Tisch stated.
On Sunday Jan. 5, 5 days earlier than Rijos was killed, a 38-year-old man was stabbed at a subway station — against the law police have linked to Mejia.
“In the course of the course of this murder investigation, an officer assigned to the Transit Bureau acknowledged that the suspect on this homicide seemed similar to one other perpetrator that had dedicated a stabbing on East 138th Road on the subway stairs,” NYPD Chief of Detectives Joe Kenny stated, in accordance with WABC-TV.
Tisch stated that when Mejia was arrested, he was “sporting the identical sneakers and pants he wore in the course of the murder, and he was in possession of a bloody knife,” in accordance with CBS.
This text appeared initially on The Western Journal.
