Usanewsonline.com Desk: Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz announced  11 April  that Edwin Sarmiento, 31, has been  sentenced to 24 years in prison for stabbing and killing a 30-year-old woman in February 2020. The  defendant pleaded guilty last month to manslaughter.  

District Attorney Katz said, “The defendant showed no mercy when he grabbed multiple knives and  plunged them into the body of this defenseless woman. With this last step in our judicial process, the  defendant has been sentenced by the Court giving the family of the victim closure.”  

Sarmiento, of Van Cleef Street, in Corona, Queens, pleaded guilty on March 11th to manslaughter in  the first degree before Queens Supreme Court Justice Kenneth Holder. Today, Justice Holder ordered  Sarmiento to be incarcerated for 24 years, to be followed by five years’ post release supervision.  

District Attorney Katz said, on February 8, 2020, shortly after 4 a.m. the defendant and the victim,  Juliet Ximena Galindo Puentes, argued inside the bedroom of the home they shared. The heated discussion  turned violent when Sarmiento grabbed a knife and stabbed the 30-year-old woman numerous times. Then,  the defendant went to the kitchen for a bigger knife. He broke down a door to get to the woman again, as  she tried to hide and protect herself. But the defendant continued the attack, stabbing her with the second  knife and then fleeing the apartment. The defendant was apprehended a short time later a nearby gas station.  He was still wearing the blood-soaked clothes and carried a bag filled with money, phones, passports and  other belongings.  

Emergency medical responders rushed Ms. Galindo Puentes to a nearby hospital, where she was  pronounced dead.  

Senior Assistant District Attorney Tara DiGregorio, Assistant Deputy Bureau Chief of the District  Attorney’s Human Trafficking Bureau and formerly with the DA’s Homicide Bureau, prosecuted the case  under the supervision of Assistant District Attorneys Peter J. McCormack III and John Kosinski, Senior  Deputy Bureau Chiefs, Karen Ross, Deputy Chief, and under the overall supervision of Executive Assistant  District Attorney for Major Crimes Daniel A. Saunders.   Press Release