Police said Monday they were searching for a suspect in the fatal stabbings of three people, including a 5-year-old boy, in a Bronx apartment building early Sunday.
Responding to a 911 call around 6:40 a.m. Sunday, officers found Jonathan Rivera, 38, unresponsive and bleeding from multiple stab wounds in the hallway of a building on East 136th Street in Mott Haven.
As the officers searched the area, they forced their way into a nearby apartment on the first floor. There, they discovered 5-year-old Kayden Rivera unresponsive and with multiple stab wounds on an air mattress and 33-year-old Hanoi Peralta unresponsive and with multiple stab wounds in a bedroom, according to police.
All three victims were pronounced dead at the scene, and investigators ruled the deaths as homicides.
Neighbors and relatives were struggling to process the deaths Monday, as the walls of the building’s lobby remained spattered with blood and police kept watch over the crime scene.
Rivera’s father, 60-year-old Miguel Angel Rivera, was outside the building, trying to understand who could have killed his son and why.
“He was a good father, he did the best he could for his son, and this is what happened to him,” he said in Spanish. “I really don’t know why this happened. I’m waiting for the agents from the 40th Precinct to let me know if they found his phone, because it has a ton of information on it. And her phone does too.”
Miguel Angel Rivera said his son had broken up with Peralta, Kayden’s mother, but continued to visit the Mott Haven building to spend time with his son.
Eusebio Baez, 33, a cousin of Jonathan Rivera’s, said his cousin and Peralta seemed to be patching things up recently.
The night before they were found dead, they attended a paint-and-sip together, Baez said, citing a post he saw on Rivera’s Instagram page.
“They were on social media having a good time,” Baez said. “He was basically showing them, showing the pictures of his painting, her painting, and…
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