Man sentenced for killing, dismembering Bronx woman

NEW YORK - A man was sentenced Friday to 27 years to life in prison for killing a 25-year-old woman whose dismembered body parts were found in two New York City parks.

Daquan Wheeler, 34, of the Bronx, was convicted of murder and other charges in April in the 2018 death of Lisa Marie Velasquez.

"It was a horrifying series of acts," Bronx District Attorney Darcel Clark said, adding that she hoped the sentence gives Velasquez's family and friends "some measure of peace during this nightmare they are living."

According to prosecutors, Wheeler killed Velasquez at an apartment he shared with the mother of his child, whom she had gone there to help with some unspecified issue.

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Wheeler struck Velasquez in the head with a hammer and repeatedly hit her with the tool before wrapping an electrical cord around her neck, prosecutors said. He then dragged Velasquez's body into a bathtub, dismembered her with a machete, and placed her remains in trash bags.

Visitors found Velasquez’s arms and feet in three trash bags under a pier in Barretto Point Park in Hunts Point. Two bags containing her head and torso were found by a Parks Department worker about two miles away in Crotona Park.

When Velasquez was 12, she and her younger siblings witnessed a man stab and strangle their mother to death, the New York Times reported. The killer was the mother's boyfriend.

Prosecutors say the woman Wheeler was living with, Ciara Martinez, helped dispose Velasquez’s body and clean up the apartment where she was killed. She testified under a cooperation agreement and will be sentenced Tuesday to time served on a conspiracy charge.