NYPD cops on Wednesday nabbed the woman they say fatally slit a mother’s throat during a Bronx brawl outside an illegal after-hours club.
Jalessa Richardson was arrested about 1 a.m. for the June 1 slaying of 37-year-old Ashley Smith. Just hours earlier, the NYPD released an image of Richardson and her name and asked the public’s help tracking her down. Police say the suspect has two nicknames: Duchess Dior and Bad B—h.
Both Richardson, 32, and Smith were partying at the makeshift club, which was operating out of a several garages belonging to a homeowner on Oakley St. near E. 219th St. in Highbridge, before the slay, NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said Tuesday.
Smith went to the club, dubbed a “Weekend Sauce” event, with three friends, one of whom was knocked to the ground during an argument, Kenny said.
After the scuffle, the bouncer kicked all 40 of the guests out onto the street just before 6:10 a.m., he added.
Once on the street, a fight broke out among the large group and Smith was slashed in the neck.
Medics rushed her to Jacobi Medical Center, where she died a short time later, police said.
Richardson, who lives in the Mount Eden section of the Bronx, fled the scene, cops said.
Smith, who grew up in Yonkers, was just days away from moving out of a Bronx shelter into her own apartment, her grieving mother told the Daily News last week.
She had two sons, ages 21 and 14, and a 9-year-old daughter. Her oldest son and his girlfriend were expecting their own child when the grandmother-to-be was killed.
“I just can’t understand why everybody else is alive and my daughter’s dead,” Smith’s mother Monique Smith told the Daily News after the slaying. “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t understand it. Why is she the only one that’s gone if there were that many people fighting?”
Richardson’s arraignment in Bronx Criminal Court was pending Wednesday on charges of murder, manslaughter and weapon possession.
