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Nassau County Acting District Attorney Joyce A. Smith announced that Sixto Tapia-Angeles, age 28, of Hempstead was sentenced to 20 years to life in prison on Friday, Nov. 19.
Tapia-Angeles pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in September, Smith said.
“After strangling his girlfriend to death, this defendant devised a haphazard and brutal plan to deceive police, slitting her throat and cutting his own wrist to conceal a murder and create the appearance of a double suicide attempt,” Smith said. “His plan failed, and Tapia-Angeles now faces a life sentence for his crime.”
According to the District Attorney's Office, on Saturday, March 21, 2020, at 9:30 p.m., the Tapia-Angeles made a call to 911 saying that he was “dying.”
When police responded to the Harriman Avenue home in Hempstead, they found Tapia-Angeles with lacerations to his wrist and his girlfriend, 19-year-old Maria Rodriguez-Perez, dead in bed with her throat sliced, the DA's Office said.
According to the investigation, the defendant initially told police that his girlfriend committed suicide, but later admitted that he had choked Rodriguez-Perez until she stopped moving, then slit her throat to make her death appear to be a suicide.
Tapia-Angeles' wounds were determined to be superficial and self-inflicted as part of his attempt to make the police believe he had tried to commit suicide as well, they added.
He was arrested on Sunday, March 22, 2020, by the Nassau County Police Department.
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