The baby-sitter was already hearing voices before arriving to watch his half brother.
Deranged teen Jayden Rivera, 19, confessed hours later to a horrifying Bronx triple-homicide in which he disemboweled the 5-year-old boy and fatally bashed his dad and the toddler’s mother with a pot left dented by the savage attacks at their apartment, NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said as the suspect remained inside a suburban psychiatric ward on Tuesday.
Rivera’s attorney told the Daily News he suffers from “extreme mental health issues.”
The attacker, who was tending to young victim Kayden Rivera at his father’s home this past weekend while the youth’s parents went out for dinner, returned later to his mother’s residence to say he believed the three innocent victims were going to kill him before acknowledging he “did something wrong,” said Kenny. Jayden Rivera had told her about the voices before heading over to watch the little boy at the home of their father, the chief added.
Police were called hours later to the building to find dad Jonathan Rivera, 38, lying dead in the hallway outside his apartment, with the boy’s 33-year-old lifeless mother Hanoi Peralta discovered on a bed with 15 stab wounds to the back, seven to her chest and four more to the face on Sunday.
The 5-year-old was stabbed eight times in the torso before the killer gutted the child, said Kenny, adding criminal charges were pending in the multiple murders. The father was stabbed once in the chest, with police finding a slash wound to his forehead and defensive wounds on both hands.
“While being looked after by medical personnel, (the suspect) made spontaneous utterances that he did something bad and killed somebody,” said Kenny. “When he returned home, he stated to his mother that he was hearing voices and that Rivera and Peralta were going to hurt him.”
Neighbors recounted hearing someone “screaming the Lord’s Prayer in Spanish” at one point, according to the chief.
The dented pot used to attack the victims was recovered at the crime scene, with the little boy’s intestines “out on the bed” when cops arrived, said Kenny. Rivera was taken to the psychiatric ward at Westchester Medical Center after telling his mother about the bloody massacre.
The accused killer was home with the child as the couple went out to dinner at around 6 p.m. at the Paint and Pour restaurant on the Lower East Side, with the pair returning home about two hours later.
The couple had left Rivera with little Kayden only a few weeks after his 5th birthday, with neighbors hearing screams from the apartment at around midnight, again around 2 a.m. and once more around 5 a.m. this past Sunday. Kenny said one neighbor looked outside and saw nothing, with police finally called around 6:40 a.m.
After discovering the body in the hallway, officers peered through an apartment building window to see the lifeless little boy inside. Once in the apartment, cops discovered the third victim. Police recovered bloody clothes and sneakers from the suspect’s home, with the footwear matching sneaker prints left at the crime scene, said Kenny.
The suspect was a recent college dropout and had been working as a doorman, according to his grandfather Miguel Rivera.
Jayden Rivera had no prior arrests, and he was taken by his mother to the hospital and admitted to the psychiatric ward about four hours before the bodies were found.
“We are coordinating with Bellevue Hospital to arrange the proper mental health care in which Mr. Rivera needs,” Jayden Rivera’s lawyer Nicholas Ramcharitar said in a statement. “We send our condolences to the family of this tragic event and will be looking forward to ongoing conversations with the NYPD and Bronx District Attorney’s Office.”
