A pair of teen squatters were charged with murder Thursday in the vicious death of a Manhattan mom whose body was stuffed into a duffle bag after she found the intruders inside her mom’s apartment.
Halley Tejada, 19, and Kensly Alston, 18, were extradited from Pennsylvania to face charges in the death of Nadia Vitels, a 52-year-old mom who came face-to-face with her alleged killers last month when she went to check up on her late mom’s upscale pad.
Tejada was led out of the 17th Precinct stationhouse in handcuffs shortly before 2:30 p.m., with the suspects now scheduled to be arraigned on second-degree murder charges in Manhattan Criminal Court.
He did not respond to questions from reporters.
Police conducting a welfare check on March 14 found Vitels’ body inside a duffel back in a closet.
The 19th-floor apartment on East 31st Street had been vacant for three or four months after Vitets’ mother’s death, according to police and sources.
On March 10, Vitels, freshly back from a trip to Spain, stopped by to drop off some things to prepare the apartment for some relatives to stay there — the same day the two suspects were spotted on security cameras walking through the lobby of the building and into the elevator.
Two days later, Vitels’ 23-year-old son got a text from his mom, but would not hear from her again.
On March 14 the worried son called the cops to conduct a wellness check in the apartment.
Vitels’ body was found stuffed in the duffel bag inside a closet with blunt force injuries to the head, multiple facial fractures, a brain injury and two broken ribs, according to police.
The two suspects were seen on surveillance footage fleeing the apartment and jumping into Vitels’ Lexus SUV, which they drove through New Jersey and into Pennsylvania, where they crashed the vehicle.
The pair, who also used the dead woman’s credit card while on the run, were taken into custody in Lower Paxton Township and held pending extradition back to New York.
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