By Miguel Cruz Tejada
NEW YORK._ A 65-year-old Dominican grandmother, identified as Maritza Yauger, stabbed her granddaughter 14 times out of 7 of hers in the apartment where the girl was visiting the attacker from New Jersey, and it was her adoration of her.
Legal protocols do not reveal the girl’s name.
The fact has astonished all the neighbors and those close to Yauger, whom they consider a grandmother who loves the attacked granddaughter and is dedicated to serving and helping others.
The grandmother is being held in a Bronx hospital where she underwent a psychological evaluation by court order where the case is being handled.
The attack occurred for unknown reasons at the Clinton Avenue building on Tuesday at 8:00 a.m., stabbing the girl in the neck, stomach, and back with a foreign object and leaving her in a pool of blood and critical condition.
The girl was admitted to Lincoln Hospital in the Bronx, where she is stabilizing, according to the doctors treating her and the police.
The grandmother’s state of health has not been detailed in the police report.
Neighbors of Yauger who know her granddaughter said they couldn’t understand how the grandmother could commit such a brutal attack on the girl whom they assured she adored more than anyone else.
Several locals said that the grandmother pampered her granddaughter at the local beauty salon, showing her around her block and pampering her with candy when the girl visited from her New Jersey home.
“She adored that girl,” said Eva Devers, 66, an old friend of Yauger’s, adding that after hearing the news, she told herself she couldn’t believe it.
Yauger, a native of the Dominican Republic, would take her granddaughter to be pampered, paying her to do her hair and nails.
Both walked the grandmother’s dog together through the streets of the neighborhood.
Both used to walk together the grandmother’s dog through the neighborhood streets.
Grandma brought cornmeal and coconut arepas to provide workers at the neighborhood bodega, a popular sweet in the Dominican Republic.
Some said Yauger was depressed and sad after the recent death of her mother.
Yauger is charged with attempted murder, attempted assault, battery, reckless endangerment, and endangering the welfare of a child.
“It’s been very scary and I’ve been praying for that girl,” Yauger’s neighbor Ana Martinez told the NY Post tabloid on Wednesday.
