2 Children Killed in NY Identified, Nanny in Police Custody at Hospital
By: Richard Esposito & Michael S. James
Updated: October 26, 2012
The New York City Police Department have identified the two kids found stabbed to death in a bathtub in the family's luxury apartment where the kids' nanny was also found lying unconscious nearby with apparently self-inflicted stab wounds to her neck.
The kids have been identified by police as 6-year-old Lucia Krim and 2-year-old Leo Krim. Both children were taken to St. Luke's Hospital Thursday evening and were pronounced dead.
The nanny has been identified as Yoselyn Ortega, 50, according to ABC News station WABC-TV. Police have not officially released her identity. Ortega is in critical but stable condition at a local hospital. The police told WABC that the nanny is in custody at the hospital. The investigation is ongoing and no charges have been filed at this time.
The mother and her other child, a 3-year-old daughter, were returning from a swimming lesson to the luxury La Rochelle apartment building on the city's affluent Upper West Side at approximately 5:30 p.m. Thursday, New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly told reporters.
When they found the second floor apartment dark, she went back downstairs and asked the doorman if the nanny had left with the other children only to be told that was not the case.
She went back upstairs and discovered her two children stabbed in the tub. The mother's screams could be heard emanating from the apartment, Kelly said.
No charges were yet filed as the investigation proceeded "aggressively," Kelly said, but the "operating assumption" was that the nanny's wounds were self-inflicted.
A neighbor who lives on the same floor in the building at 57 West 75th Street near Columbus Avenue told The Associated Press that she heard screams around 5:30 p.m.
"There was some kind of screaming about, 'You slit her throat!' It was horrible," said the neighbor, Rima Starr, a music therapist.
Starr told AP she believed the nanny had been hired just recently.
"I met her in the elevator, the day before yesterday, and was making small talk," she said.
After police arrived, she told AP, the mother remained in the building's lobby, screaming hysterically and clutching her surviving child.
According to Kelly, the preliminary police investigation had not yet yielded a possible motive for the deaths. Officials were not yet identifying the nanny or parents of the children, Kelly said.
