A small memorial for Hernandez was set up outside the entrance to her building in the Wagner Houses complex. (Photo by Sarah Tan)

Julia Hernandez, 73, described by many neighbors as beautiful and lively, was found unconscious in her apartment in the Wagner Houses in East Harlem yesterday evening. Police are calling the crime a homicide.

The victim, discovered by her daughter, had been suffocated, with her feet bound and a plastic bag tied over her head, police said. She was pronounced dead at the scene.

Police are currently seeking Gregory Velez, 35, as a suspect. Neighbors who lived near Hernandez believe that the family knew Velez in some capacity.

“She must have recognized him and just let him in,” Chum Chang, a neighbor who lived on the same floor as Hernandez said. He was home when the incident occurred but said he didn’t hear any noise or sounds of struggle in the hallway.

Chang added that since last month, Hernandez seemed to be wary of a certain man in the lobby.

“Last month, we were coming home late at the same time, and she asked me ‘do you know that man in the building?’ and she pointed to a tall black male in the lobby,” Chang recalled. However, he said that when they approached the entrance, the man disappeared, taking the stairs. “She was very afraid, so we took the elevator up together.”

According to neighbors, Hernandez was returning to her apartment on Tuesday evening when she thought that she was being followed. She called her daughter, who said she would be over in two hours. Police initially responded to a call of a robbery, but when they arrived, Hernandez’s daughter said she had found her mother unconscious on the floor. The robber stole a flat-screen television.

Friends of Hernandez say that though she was elderly, she was often seen going out dancing or shopping.

“Everytime I see her, she always says ‘Bailando, bailando’, dancing,” said Chastity Cruz, another neighbor who lived on the same floor. “The only thing is that she was always by herself, which I didn’t like.”

Cruz said that for the past week, she and her sisters had been noticing a man they didn’t recognize standing in the lobby of their building. She thought that their floor was specifically targeted because many senior citizens live there.

An unrelated robbery occurred in the Wagner Houses on October 10, though no one was injured. Many residents complained about inadequate security in the building and some said that a police notification of the past robbery was posted on the front door only recently.

“We need to be alerted to what’s going on; we don’t know who’s in the neighborhood,” said resident Joanne Tucker, who has lived in the Wagner Houses for 40 years. “This is overdue. Gunshots ring through here all the time, and where are the police?”

Police describe Velez as six feet tall and wearing a gold earring.The investigation continues.

Robber's sketch posted at subway stop. (Photo by Tahiat Mahboob)

In the most recent in a series of subway robberies at west side stations in uptown Manhattan, a woman was stabbed.

A mugger stabbed Jessica Kim, 26, at the Broadway and 96th Street station on Sept. 12.

“There were other people on the platform but no one helped,” said Kim, a waitress at a midtown restaurant. She estimated seeing 20 people on the platform during her 2:30 a.m. attack.

Kim was carrying a couple of hundred dollars in tips in her purse. She noticed her attacker, his feet propped on another seat, on the 2 train heading uptown from Columbus Circle.

When Kim got off to transfer to the 1 train at 96th Street, the mugger followed suit and showed her a knife. “He grabbed my purse and I tried to grab it back and he stabbed me,” she said in an interview.  Kim eventually asked a man wearing headphones to call 911. She recalled, “I think someone might have run after him but they weren’t able to catch him,” she said.

Kim collapsed on the platform with a stab wound in her left side. An ambulance took her to St. Luke’s Hospital where her condition stabilized.

Immediately afterward, she told the New York Daily News she was more concerned about her bag.”I had a lot of stuff in there, important things like keys, IDs,” she said. “I can’t breathe well: It’s like someone’s standing on my rib cage. But I wouldn’t care if I had my bag.”

Kim, who has lived in New York for four years, didn’t tell her family in Hawaii about the stabbing. “I don’t want to worry them,” she said.

A week later, standing at her front door, her condition seemed improved. “I’m still a little sore,” she said.

Kim described the mugger as a tall black man with a long face. Police released a fuller description: approximately 6-feet-tall, weighing around 175 pounds, wearing blue jean shorts, white T-shirt and black sneakers. Footage from the station’s security camera showed the man outside a turnstile.

He is wanted for robbing two other women at subway stations. On Aug. 7, at 7:35 p.m. he robbed a 37-year-old, leaving the A train station at 127 Street and St. Nicholas Avenue, said police. On Aug. 27, at 3:25 a.m. he fled from the A train stop at 207 Street after robbing a 28-year-old on the train.

Police did not release the victims’ names.

Despite the news coverage, commuters and neighbors at the 96th Street station didn’t know it had been a crime scene.

“Really? This station right here?” asked Frank Revis, 64, who owns the 24/7 Europan Cafe next to the station.

“I didn’t know there was a stabbing,” said a middle-aged, black 1-train commuter, who did not identify herself.

The robber is still at large and Wanted posters are still taped to token booths.

To date, there have been 232 robberies in Washington Heights, a part of the 34th Precinct, down from 256 in 2008, according to New York Police Department reports. Robberies have declined rapidly since 1990 when 1,919 robberies were reported in the area.

However, this community still has the highest rate of robberies in upper Manhattan.

The suspect, caught on surveillance video, demanded money after revealing a semi-automatic weapon.

On Wednesday, Dec. 9 at 9:40a.m. an unidentified man entered the Bank of America, approached a teller and displayed a semi-automatic handgun and a demand note, according to police reports.

The teller complied with the demands and handed the suspect an undetermined amount of money. The suspect than ran from the bank, headed east on Dyckman Street.

Officials are still investigating the robbery and no arrests have been made, a police spokesman confirmed.

Lying in bed at his West 141th Street apartment, he writhed in agony. Pain shot through his left leg; blood soaked through the bandages wrapped around his thigh and oozed down his calf. Images of his family – his father, brother, wife and infant son, refugees in Mali, raced through his mind. If he should die, he thought, who would take care of them?

Three days earlier, on Aug. 23, Ndiaye, a Mauritian refugee who arrived in Harlem in September 2006, tackled an armed robber at DD Fashion Store in the Bronx. The assailant fled without the goods, but left Ndiaye with three bullet holes and some modest media fanfare.

Now recovering, visiting a physical therapist and taking ESL classes, he’s about to learn his future. Last Wednesday, Ndiaye, 22,  appeared before a judge for a master calendar immigration hearing to prove he has legal representation, the first step in the arbitration of his refugee status. Ndiaye will reappear in court in April.

Ndiaye has been nervous about this process for months. If his refugee claim is eventually denied, he’ll be deported. Brian I. Kaplan, Ndiaye’s lawyer, declined to comment on case specifics.

On the afternoon of the attempted robbery, however, Ndiaye had little doubt of the outcome. “I was going to win,” he said. “I had to.”

The harrowing fight – captured on a store surveillance tape – erupted after a customer pulled a gun as Ndiaye was ringing up his purchases. Handing the customer a bag of clothing, Ndiaye noticed the gun in the man’s shaking right hand. In a flurry, Ndiaye jumped to his right; the man, startled, fired the gun, and Ndiaye leaped on his back, grabbing his wrists and trying to wrestle the gun from his hand. After crashing into a display case, Ndiaye managed to pin the assailant to the ground – but two shots pierced the inside of Ndiaye’s left thigh. In a final fit of strength, he ripped the gun out of the man’s hand, and took a third shot to his thigh. The shooter escaped as Ndiaye lay face down on the floor, his pants wet with blood.

His actions were primal. Aside from childhood horseplay he had never been in a fight. “I was scared,” Ndiaye said. “I was just trying to protect myself.” The next 18 hours were a blur. Bystanders outside the store rushed in and called an ambulance. They doused water over his shaved head; Ndiaye, a Muslim, was observing the Ramadan daily fast and wouldn’t consume even a sip. He was taken to Lincoln Hospital where he refused to call his family, not wanting to worry them.

The ensuing news coverage painted Ndiaye as a hero, a title he has yet to grow comfortable with. “If they call me a hero, I accept it,” he said. “But I thank God, the police, the people at the hospital; I thank everybody.” Ndiaye, who had lost his job at a Queens Dunkin’ Donuts when it closed, was only filling in at the Bronx store for his vacationing cousin.

“I feel so bad,” said his cousin, back from vacation and standing next to a quadruple-screen security monitor. He declined to give his name because the robber was still at large. “I should have been here.”

Despite the tumult Ndiaye has experienced in recent months, it doesn’t compare to his bleak and precarious former life in Mauritania, an existence marred by enslavement.

Ndiaye was born into a nomadic tribe historically oppressed by Mauritania’s “white Moor” ruling class, the Bedan. Although recent anti-slavery legislation in Mauritania attempted to eradicate such subjugation, it mostly amounted to a public relations move, said Bakary Tandia, a Mauritanian case manager and policy advocate at the African Services Committee in Harlem. Tandia estimated 40 to 45 percent of the nation’s population consists of enslaved or formerly enslaved people, commonly identified as Harateens, literally meaning “freed slaves.”

Mauritania has been rocked by political strife in recent years, including military coups in 2005 and 2008. Despite efforts to stabilize the government, said Kevin Bales, president of Free the Slaves, an international human rights organization, “human rights are still being suppressed.”