NYPD: 19-Year-Old Dajuan Williams Charged With Killing Queens Mother Gudelia Vallinas
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- A suspect is under arrest in a stay bullet shooting that killed a mother of two last month in Queens.
Police arrested 19-year-old Dajuan Williams on charges of murder and criminal possession of a weapon.
The victim, 37-year-old Gudelia Vallinas, was running errands less than a block away from her Astoria home when she was killed on March 12. She left behind a husband and two kids, ages 9 and 11.
"That pain will never go away. I will have to live that forever," husband Alfredo Vallinas told CBS2.
Her death was among three recent shootings outside the Woodside Houses, prompting calls for action from the community.
"Over the course of the last two or three weeks we've seen these streets turned into a war zone," Queens Borough President Donovan Richards said last month. "We need to ensure that these young people are getting the investments that they need to stop these shootings. It's about prevention."
"Parents, take control of your household, where some of these children and young men are living," added Annie Cotton Morris, the president of the Woodside Houses Tenant Association.
Vallinas' family said she would want them to forgive.
"She would never want us to feel hate in our hearts for the people that did this to her," said her niece Iris Vergara.