An upscale area of New York City is reeling after the stabbing deaths of two young children whose mother discovered their bodies in a blood-soaked bathtub near their unconscious and bleeding nanny.
“Her screams were heard by a neighbor, who alerted police, who arrived and found the children dead,” New York Police Department Deputy Commissioner Paul Browne said.
Police believe the nanny, 50-year-old Yoselyn Ortega, fatally stabbed the two children, 6-year-old Lucia Krim and her 2-year-old brother Leo, Thursday night in the family’s posh Upper West Side apartment, and then tried to kill herself.
Ortega is listed in critical condition. She had not been formally charged by Friday afternoon and police say they are hoping to interview her by the end of the day.
Police say the mother, Marina Krim, had taken a third child to swimming lessons, and came home with the 3-year-old to find the apartment dark.
She returned to the lobby and asked the doorman if the nanny had taken her other two children out, but was told they had not left.
Looking around the apartment minutes later, she found the bodies.
“I could hear really loud, hysterical screaming,” an elderly neighbor told the New York Daily News.
"It's unbelievable, unbelievable, I can't imagine what the mother is feeling," neighbor Charles Zimmerman said to CBS News.
Krim’s face was shielded by a sheet as she left the scene and was taken by ambulance to a hospital where she was admitted for trauma.
Her husband, Kevin Krim, a CNBC television executive, was returning from a business trip and was met by police at the airport who broke the news and transported him to the hospital where his wife and surviving child were waiting.
By all accounts, the nanny had a good relationship with the family, and they had reportedly spent time at her family home in the Dominican Republic.
There is no indication that she had any criminal record.
Marina Krim kept an active, popular blog entitled Life with the Little Krim Kids, in which she detailed many of the details of their lives. The blog had been suspended by Friday.
She posted to the site Thursday afternoon, just hours before the two children were killed.
