RIVERSIDE MAN PLEADS GUILTY TO MURDER

(SUFFOLK COUNTY, N.Y.) – Suffolk County District Attorney Raymond A. Tierney today announced that a Riverside man pleaded guilty to an indictment in which he was charged with Second Degree Murder after he fatally stabbed his girlfriend.

“This plea will not bring the victim back, nor will it erase the brutal acts her young daughter witnessed,” said Tierney. “However, this defendant will now serve an extensive prison sentence and her family and loved ones can hopefully rest a little easier knowing that the defendant has been brought to justice.”

According to court filings and statements by the defendant, on August 10, 2020, Bayron Fajardo-Gonzalez, 34, attacked the victim after she had arrived back to the couple’s residence with her 9-year-old daughter. The victim, Tania Fox, 45, and the defendant, who was not the child’s father, had been arguing earlier in the evening and once home, the victim and her daughter locked themselves in the child’s bedroom to avoid the defendant. 

After being unable to gain entry to the child’s bedroom, Fajardo-Gonzalez went outside and broke a window to the child’s bedroom.  By doing so, the defendant forced the victim and her daughter to run out of her room and run up the stairs to a small attic and hide.  Fox quietly called her cousin and told her “…if anything happens to me, Bayron is guilty.  Please take care of [my daughter].”  The defendant followed after them, initially barging into a tenant’s room demanding to know where Fox was.  Fajardo-Gonzalez then entered the attic area and stabbed Fox multiple times in the chest while her daughter was standing next to her.  The child escaped the attic and called 911, as did the tenant.  While the child was on the phone calling 911, the victim could be heard screaming in the background.  Officers from the Southampton Town Police Department quickly arrived and observed Fajardo-Gonzalez walking down the stairs from the attic covered in the victim’s blood.  The defendant admitted he stabbed Fox.

Fajardo-Gonzalez faces 20 years to life in prison and is due back in court for sentencing before Suffolk County Court Judge Anthony Senft on April 27, 2022.  

This case was prosecuted by Assistant District Attorney John Scarglato of the Narcotics Bureau and Assistant District Attorney Melissa Grier of the of the Child Abuse and Domestic Violence Bureau.

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Defendants are presumed innocent until proven guilty. No one is above the law.

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