Bronx District Attorney Darcel D. Clark today announced that a man has been sentenced to 20 years in prison and five years post-release supervision for stabbing his wife to death inside a Bronx homeless shelter.
District Attorney Clark said, “The defendant stabbed his wife in front of their children. This vicious attack not only took the life of a 19-year-old woman, but also ripped the two children from their mother and caused trauma to staff working to provide services to the defendant at the shelter where the stabbing occurred.”
District Attorney Clark said the defendant, Ernesto Valerio, 27, was sentenced to 20 years in prison and five years of post-release supervision by Bronx Supreme Court Justice Marsha Michael. The defendant pleaded guilty to first-degree Manslaughter on October 25, 2022.
According to the investigation, on October 2, 2019, the defendant stabbed his wife, Emilsy Calix, 19, in the face, neck and chest with a kitchen knife inside their apartment in 285 East 171st Street. The couple’s two-year-old daughter and five-months-old daughter were present. Security guards in the shelter heard screams and went to the apartment. The defendant told them his wife went to the store and one of the children had fallen. As the guards went to the lobby to check the sign-out book, the defendant left the scene, leaving his two children at the shelter. The guards returned to the couple’s apartment and found the body of the victim in the bathtub. The defendant fled and was arrested that night in the Bronx.
The case was prosecuted by Assistant District Attorney Allison Kline of the Domestic Violence Bureau, under the supervision of Agata DiGiovanni, Chief of the Domestic Violence Bureau, and under the overall supervision of Adrienne Giunta, Deputy Chief of the SpecialVictims Division, and Joseph Muroff, Chief of the Special Victims Division.
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