By Miguel Cruz Tejada
NEW YORK._ The Dominican Emilio Rosa, convicted by a jury in the trial that followed him in the Superior Court of Salem in Massachusetts, of strangling his wife Wanda Rosa in 2016, will be sentenced to life imprisonment without possible incarceration. Conditional freedom.
The man who took the stand as the only witness in the case admitted to having killed Wanda, alleging that he “at that time he did not know what he was doing.”
He admitted that he killed her because he found a letter that a prisoner had sent him four years ago in which he told him that de la Rosa was questioning whether the child was hers.
The boy, the couple’s son, Ethan Rosa, who was four years old, was the star witness for prosecutors in the trial because his father murdered his mother in his presence, which he strongly recounted. In front of the jury.
“He killed her,” the now 11-year-old boy said with absolute certainty.
The convict, with a past of violence, death threats, and abuse against the victim, was serving sentences for serious domestic violence crimes.
“Your son is going to be left without a mother,” de la Rosa warned Wanda as a warning that he planned to murder her, which he denied at trial.
The jurors’ decision was unanimous: a “guilty” verdict that would take him to prison for life without the right to request parole.
The prosecutor asked de la Rosa if he killed his girlfriend steps from a bed they shared.
“Did you kill Wanda Rosa?” asked Assistant District Attorney Kate MacDougall.
“I am responsible. That is correct,” de la Rosa responded, admitting to the homicide.
His defense attorneys acknowledge that the crime occurred in Rosa’s apartment at 5 Tudor Street in the city of Methuen in 2016; they argued that she committed manslaughter, not murder.
“I was not aware of what he was doing at that time,” de la Rosa said when asked by the assistant prosecutor.
She recounted that on September 12, 2016, he and Rosa argued in the middle of the night after he questioned her about a letter from another man that she kept in her belongings.
A DNA test showed that Ethan was 99.9 percent of his son.
“I don’t know what he was feeling. I was numb. I felt empty, betrayed, with all kinds of feelings,” de la Rosa said.
He, Wanda, and his son all slept in the same bed that night. After she got up to go to the bathroom, de la Rosa questioned her about the letter she found.
He revealed that while the two were arguing, he snapped, grabbed Rosa by her neck, and began to strangle her.
He claimed that her son held her hand, asking her not to kill her.
He denies planning to hurt Rosa.
He did not call 911 or try to get help.
She left the apartment and took Ethan to the Lawrence house that his mother and her sister shared.
CAPTION
NEW YORK._ Emilio de la Rosa, convicted of the murder of his wife, Wanda Rosa, will be sentenced to life in prison. (External source).
