There were many tears, but no forgiveness, in a Manhattan courtroom yesterday, as a Washington Heights teen who stabbed his stepmother 43 times was led away to serve 11 years to life in prison for the chilling murder.
He killed her in her bedroom because she was “nitpicking me,” killer stepson Raymen Fernandez told cops.
“I don’t forgive you!” Rosario Perez, sister to victim Janet Fernandez, 40, said at the emotional sentencing.
“I don’t. And my sister’s two little girls don’t,” said Perez, 30, of The Bronx. The victim’s daughters, ages 11 and 6, had returned home to their West 177th Street apartment with their father to discover their mother’s body.
Raymen Fernandez was only 15 last October when he admittedly grabbed a 12-inch kitchen knife as he and his stepmom argued over his having skipped school.
He told cops he put the struggling woman in a chokehold from behind, using his left arm, and stabbed her with his right hand.
“I couldn’t hold back my bad intentions,” he confessed to cops. Raymen didn’t know how many times he stabbed her, “but I wanted to see her fall to the floor,” he said.
Speaking on his own behalf yesterday, the boy apologized to Fernandez’s three sisters, who were sobbing softly in the audience. Then he griped that he, too, was suffering “every day.”
“I have to deal with this every day, going through all the things I have to go through,” the boy groused.
“You said it’s hard?” Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Michael Corriero responded. “It should be hard. . . . There’s no price you can pay that will bring back this loved one’s life. So if there’s pain, there should be pain.”