BRONX PASTOR WHO RAN OVER ESTRANGED WIFE AND ATTACKED HER WITH MACHETE IN 2019 SENTENCED FOR MANSLAUGHTER
Killing Happened in Front of Victim’s Two Young Grandchildren
Defendant Sentenced to 23 Years in Prison
Bronx District Attorney Darcel D. Clark today announced that a Yonkers man has been sentenced to 23 years in prison for running over his estranged wife with a vehicle and stabbing her with a machete in front her two grandchildren in 2019.
District Attorney Clark said, “The defendant not only took the life of a Bronx grandmother, but also inflicted a possible lifetime of trauma to her grandchildren who were witnesses to this horrific crime. The defendant and the victim had been estranged for approximately a month before he killed her. He pleaded guilty to first-degree Manslaughter in November.”
District Attorney Clark said the defendant, Victor Mateo, 65, last of 4 Eastman Place, Yonkers, N.Y., a former pastor at the Christian Congregation, The Redeemer Church in the Bronx, was sentenced today by Bronx Supreme Court Justice Margaret Clancy to 23 years in prison and five years of post-release supervision, with final orders of protection for the victim’s two grandchildren. He pleaded guilty to first-degree Manslaughter on November 17, 2021 before Bronx Supreme Court Justice Margaret Clancy.
According to the investigation, on the morning of October 3, 2019, the defendant parked his vehicle near the home of Noelia Mateo, 58, on Ellsworth Avenue in Throgs Neck. As the victim left her house to drive her grandchildren to school, Mateo struck her with his vehicle. The victim hid beneath her car, and the defendant got into her vehicle and ran her over with it. He then hacked her with a machete. The victim was taken to Jacobi Medical Center where she was pronounced dead shortly after arrival. Her grandchildren, who were 11 and nine years old at the time, witnessed the entire attack.
The defendant fled the scene in the victim’s vehicle and was arrested on October 10, 2019 in Hazleton, Pennsylvania.
The case was prosecuted by Assistant District Attorney William Browne of the Domestic Violence Bureau, under the supervision of Agata DiGiovanni, Chief of the Domestic Violence Bureau, and under the overall supervision of Adrienne Giunta, Deputy Chief of the Special Victims Division, and Joseph Muroff, Chief of the Special Victims Division.
District Attorney Clark thanked Assistant District Attorney Allison Kline and Assistant District Attorney Megan Leo, both of the Domestic Violence Bureau, for their assistance in the investigation.
District Attorney Clark also thanked NYPD Detective Francis Orlando from Bronx Homicide and NYPD Detective Kristopher Persaud of the 45th Precinct.
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