By Nelson A. King
A Guyanese woman became the first murder victim in New York in 2018, after she was found stabbed repeatedly in the back and left face-down in her Richmond Hill, Queens home, on 103rd Ave., near 113th St., according to the reports.
Stacy Singh, 26, a mother of two small children, was killed just hours after she and her husband, Vinny Loknath, 46, rang in the New Year, according to the New York Daily News.
It said a knife was found near her body when police arrived around 2 p.m.
The hard-partying Loknath committed suicide just after 11 a.m. in Forest Park, about one-and-a-half miles from the murder scene, police sources told the Daily News. It said he was found hanging from a tree in the park.
Authorities were investigating the deaths as a murder-suicide after the bodies were discovered about three hours apart on New Year’s Day, police sources said.
Loknath “was very abusive to her,” the dead woman’s brother-in-law Romain Shaw told the Daily News. “She stayed with him no matter what because they had two kids together. She was hoping for him to change, but he never did.
“He’s such a coward,” added Shaw, who Loknath was drinking heavily and using cocaine when family members gathered on New Year’s Eve at a Queens restaurant.
“He was so drunk, so very drunk,” Shaw said. “He always beat her up when he went home high.”
A neighbor, according to the Daily News, said the couple fought constantly, recalling one incident that ended with the battered wife leaving their home in an ambulance.
“The cops are always there,” the neighbor said. “They were always having big fights. But she still came back to him.”
The couple had a 5-year-old son and a 1-year-old daughter, the Daily News said.
The Guyana Chronicle said Singh reportedly migrated from Guyana five years ago. She lived at Novar, Mahaicony before migrating.
Stacy “was a very sweet person,” said Shaw. “She was a very generous, caring person. She loved her children very much, spent every penny on them. They were her world.”
The victim’s family came to the house Monday evening, with the woman’s sister collapsing upon arrival, the Daily News said.
It said the neighbor described Loknath as a construction worker often seen sitting on the front stoop of the house, smoking cigarettes and drinking beer.
