A man has been arrested in the fatal stabbing of a woman and her two young kids in a Jersey City basement apartment, prosecutors announced Thursday.
Napoleon Romero-Anduray, 31, is accused of killing 31-year-old Luisa Urbano and her two children — Juan Martin Urbano, 9, and Diana Ramirez, 5 — whose bodies were found by police in the early hours of Thursday, Hudson County Prosecutor Esther Suarez said in a news release.
Jersey City police were dispatched to a residence in the 200 block of Hutton Avenue shortly after midnight for reports of a stabbing.
Upon arrival, responding officers located the adult female victim, who was pronounced dead at the scene, officials said. Her two children were transported to Jersey City Medical Center where they were later pronounced dead.
The cause and manner of the victims’ deaths are pending further investigation by the regional medical examiner’s office.
A fourth individual — later identified as Romero-Anduray — was also found in the apartment with injuries, police said. He was transported to the same hospital where he is being treated for his wounds.
Jersey City Mayor Steven Fulop said the suspect stabbed the three victims and then “tried to stab himself.”
The “terrible triple homicide” was the result of an act of “domestic violence,” he said in a statement shared on social media.
This was a terrible triple homicide that occurred last night related to domestic violence. Woman and two children aged 5 and 9 deceased and then the male actor tried to stab himself. The man is in custody right now. We have chaplains and social workers in the neighborhood to work… https://t.co/pg0wN0Domu
— Steven Fulop (@StevenFulop) January 30, 2025
While investigators haven’t elaborated on Romero-Anduray’s relationship with the victims, some neighbors told local media he was Urbano’s boyfriend.
“I don’t know what the dispute was about, but all indications were they were a happy family,” Jay Perine, who lives in the building, told CBS News New York.
“In the summertime they cooked out, there was music. He got up, worked everyday,” he said. “This was like a sudden event.”
However, according to an online fundraiser organized by a woman who says she’s the aunt of the victim, Romero-Anduray was her niece’s “ex-partner.”
“[Romero-Anduray] broke into her apartment and took the lives of all three,” Lizeth Alejandra Gutierrez Escobar wrote in a GoFundMe page set up to raise funds “to cover the funeral expenses and the repatriation of my niece and her two children.”
“We are from Colombia,” Gutierrez Escobar wrote. “We need to bring them back home so loved ones can say their final goodbyes.”