Weeping relatives of an elderly woman who was strangled by her great-granddaughter’s father blasted the killer before a Manhattan judge tossed him in prison for 20 years to life Tuesday.
“You took from me part of my heart and life that can never be replaced,” a tearful Elaine Hernandez, the daughter of victim 73-year-old Julia Hernandez, told killer Gregory Velez, 38. “You stole from me not only my mother but my best friend.”
About a dozen of Julia’s family and friends showed up to the sentencing wearing buttons with “RIP Julia” and t-shirts that read “Justice for Julia.”
“My heart was crushed, broken into pieces,” Jeanette Hernandez, another of Julia’s daughters, said bitterly as she read from a statement while Velez refused to meet her gaze.
Jeanette Hernandez was the one who discovered her beloved mother’s corpse on the floor, a plastic bag over her head, with her ribs fractured and her face badly bruised.
Velez admitted to prosecutors that he brutally choked Hernandez inside her East Harlem apartment in 2011 as she was reaching for the phone to call for help.
Velez, whose 9-year-old daughter is Hernandez’s great-granddaughter, then callously fled with the dead woman’s large, flat-screen TV and purse.
The killer didn’t speak at his sentencing.
His lawyer, Daniel Gotlin, told Justice Bruce Allen that it was “too difficult” for his client to make a statement.
“He’s sorry for the pain and anguish he caused,” the lawyer said. “If he could undo what he did…he would certainly undo it.”