A Queens man attending a birthday party at a neighbor’s home called 911 after being stabbed eight times — only to be shot to death while still on the phone, police said.
Lenner Zuniga was robbed of cocaine he was selling along with his cell phone and cash when he was shot in the head and torso about 3:00 a.m. Sunday, cops say.
“During the 911 call you can hear him pleading,” NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said. “You hear the gunshots.”
Zuniga, 35, was four blocks from his South Richmond Hill home when he was slain attending a birthday bash in an apartment on 125th St. near 103rd Ave. that police describe as a “flophouse.”
About nine men were attending the party when a fight broke out and Zuniga fled into the bathroom and made his desperate 911 call.
Medics rushed Zuniga to Jamaica Hospital but he could not be saved.
“I’m feeling very, very bad right now,” the victim’s uncle Orlando Zuniga told the Daily News. “I’m really, really broke inside.”
The tenant of the apartment told police he had gone out to the store during the party and when he got got back everyone had left except for Zuniga, who was dead, police sources said.
The building’s landlord told the Daily News the tenant consistently creates problems in the building.
“He has been causing a lot of disturbance,” the landlord said. “He is supposed to live in the apartment by himself, no smoking or drinking, but he doesn’t care about the rules and he brings people from the street inside.”
The victim’s devastated friends and neighbors remembered him as a kindhearted man who cared for stray cats in the neighborhood, setting up a feeding station for the felines outside his home.
“He just loved animals,” said a 49-year-old neighbor who did not provide her name. “He literally every morning will come out and feed them.”
“This was a little while ago,” she added. “Probably during the summertime when they were babies. He was concerned about wintertime. He was hoping to catch one or two to keep. And he was trying to get people to adopt them.”
According to a criminal complaint, Zuniga was charged with assault for shoving his 74-year-old next-door neighbor to the ground on Sept. 30. He was released without bail and was due back in Queens Criminal Court Nov. 20.
“I think they were arguing because she was sweeping on his side, something to that effect,” said the neighbor . “She doesn’t like when you park on her side.”
Friends gathered outside Zuniga’s home Tuesday to pay their respects to his family.
“He loved his mother a lot,” said Javier Enamorado, 35, as Zuniga’s mother could be heard wailing inside.
Enamorado’s sister, who said they met the victim when they lived in the same building, said everyone who knew Zuniga is having a hard time.
“The mom called. So that’s why we came. We just found out. So it’s very shocking, everything,” said the former neighbor, who did not give her name. “She just called us and we came to see her. She cannot even talk.”
“Sometimes you’re just in the wrong place,” she said of the circumstances of Zuniga’s death. “You don’t even know who’s gonna be there. Who’s gonna snap or what’s gonna happen.”
The shooting marks the third homicide this year in Queens’ 102nd Precinct, which saw seven slayings in all of 2023, according to NYPD statistics.
There have been no arrests but Kenny said police have identified a person of interest in the case.
