A Queens woman was strangled in her home by an upstairs tenant during a quarrel over back rent, cops said Thursday, with her family saying her kind and trusting nature had compelled her to give the deadbeat the benefit of the doubt.
Zoraida Leo’s son found her dead inside her East Elmhurst home on Tuesday, according to police.
“It was a terrible scene,” Leo’s neighbor and friend Eva Rivera Rivera told the Daily News on Thursday. “He was screaming, ‘My mom was killed!'”
Cops responding to Leo’s home on 96th St. near 32nd Ave. at 5:15 p.m. Tuesday found the woman, 55, sprawled out on the floor with scratches on her face. Police initially believed she was beaten to death, but a city Medical Examiner autopsy later determined she died of strangulation.
Cops quickly determined Leo had died from an assault and zeroed in on upstairs tenant Davi Vidal, arresting him the day her body was found, a police source said. Vidal, 19, attacked Leo during an argument over unpaid rent, police said.
When cops arrested Vidal, he admitted to strangling Leo and pushing her down a flight of stairs, according to prosecutors.
“When she fell, I didn’t help her because I was scared,” Vidal allegedly told arresting officers. “I didn’t know what to do, I’m not a doctor.
“It’s my fault that she died because I pushed her,” he added.
The man said he called out to her after he shoved her, but when she didn’t answer he turned off the lights, according to prosecutors.
“I turned out the lights because I didn’t want to see her there lying on the floor,” Vidal told cops.
He didn’t call 911 and later returned to the home, where he saw Leo’s lifeless body at the foot of the stairs, prosecutors said.
“After killing her, he didn’t even run away,” the neighbor, Rivera, told The News. “He went back to his room on the second floor and hid like nothing happened.”
After giving up on selling her house three years ago, Leo began renting out bedrooms, according to Rivera. Vidal moved in last year and had never paid the woman rent, she added.
“He was always claiming he didn’t have work,” Rivera recounted. “All he ever did was sit on the stairs.”
Leo worked as a home health attendant and had owned the home for about two years.
“She was an incredibly nice lady,” said Rivera. “She never had any trouble with anybody. It was a terrible tragedy.”
Rivera watched as officials removed Leo’s body from the home and took Vidal into custody on Tuesday.
“He came out covering his face and crying,” Rivera said. “He deserves to rot.”
On Thursday evening, Leo’s adult children visited their mother’s home and lit candles in her memory.
“She was an amazing, hardworking and loving lady,” the victim’s son, Roy Saladin Leo, told The News. “She cared about others whether they were family or not.”
“She always gave everybody the benefit of the doubt, including this criminal,” he said of Vidal.
Another one of Leo’s sons, who did not want to be named, offered to help his mother evict the deadbeat tenant.
“I told her I would get him out of there but she said, ‘No, let me take care of it,'” the man said. “He should go away forever.”
Charged with murder, Vidal was held without bail during a Thursday arraignment in Queens Criminal Court.
“We want justice,” said Roy Saladin Leo. “I hope this guy never sees daylight. We want him to spend the rest of his long life behind bars.”
