Illegal Chinese immigrant, Mingdong Chen, butchers New York family for having ‘too much’
Described as an illegal Chinese immigrant, a man became bitter and jealous that is cousin had “too much” and butchered the man’s wife and four children.
Police report that Mingdong Chen, age 25, is showing no remorse as he confessed to slaughtering his cousin’s family who had allowed the man to live with them in her Brooklyn apartment.
He admitted that he committed the atrocity because he envied their way of life, a police source told The Post.
“The family had too much,” the source quoted Chen as saying.
“He meant that the family had better income and a better lifestyle than him . . . He was jealous and just killed them.”
“He [the suspect] was bizarrely calm,” said one neighbor to the Post, who asked that his name not be used.
“He was completely composed and answering their questions — even as they brought out two black bags with the kids in them,” said a different neighbor.
“He was still calmly answering their questions as the stretcher with the bloody child was rolled right past the car,” the neighbor said. “Again, he seemed unfazed.”
Chen was charged Monday but did not enter a plea.
NYPD Chief of Department Philip Banks III said Chen had cited his inability to make it in America as his motive for the slayings, which apparently took place while the victim’s husband Yi Lin Zhuo was at work.
“Everyone here is doing better than me,” Banks quoted the suspect as saying during a confession in Mandarin Chinese, the only language Chen speaks.
A family friend said slain mom Qiao Zhen Li had tried to boot Chen out of her family’s Sunset Park home.
“She told him, ‘You just leave my house,’ ” said Xiao Wei Yang, 31.
“She was never thinking he’d use the knife to cut and kill everyone . . . She was just helping him, and he just killed her whole family.”
Yang learned of the attempted eviction from a cousin of Li’s who had visited the apartment shortly before Chen’s alleged Saturday-night rampage.
“My friend went to visit her cousin a couple hours before it happened,” Yang said. “She left, so she just said thanks to God.”
About three minutes before cops and ambulances arrived, a neighbor, who asked not to be identified, heard a woman in the house screaming “Help! Help! Help! Help!’’ in the Chinese dialect of Fukinese.
The children’s father came home from work too late to save his family, according to neighbors and law-enforcement sources, who stressed early Sunday that their information was still preliminary.
Police identified the victims as 1-year-old William Zhuo, a 5-year-old Kevin Zhuo, a 7-year-old Amy Zhuo, 9-year-old Linda Zhuo and 37-year-old Qiao Zhen Li.
photo JRLibby
