A former New York City transit cop who shot and killed his wife in front of their two young children in their home told police it was her infidelity that drove him to murder.
Kevin Canty, 43, broke down and confessed just moments after shooting wife Jessica Mera 10 times with a 9-mm pistol said prosecutors at his arraignment Sunday in Queens Criminal Court. ‘I’m sorry,’ Canty is said to have told the detective driving him from the crime scene.
‘I love my wife,’ he said. ‘She was cheating on me.’ He went on to call Mera a ‘whore.’ ‘I know I’m going to jail,’ he reportedly told the detectives. He was taken into custody only a mile from his Queens home.
The couple’s two young children, a girl aged four and a boy aged eight, were home as he fired into Mera’s stomach, upper chest, breast, arm, and armpit.
According to CBS, a neighbor shopping at a nearby deli saw the two children run from the house, yelling, ‘Daddy shot Mommy!’ ‘They came in screaming, crying saying their dad just shot their mom and there’s blood all over, please help,’ local Heidi Gamble said.
For those who knew the couple the shooting was horrifying but somehow inevitable. Shanique Varlack, 22, said Canty often threatened his wife and was prone to drunken rages. ‘He told more than one person – ‘I’m gonna kill this b—h one day,’’ Varlack said. ‘Everybody is just so distraught. He’s a cop. He’s supposed to protect us. He took an oath and now? He’s a murderer. She did not deserve to die.’
Another neighbor said Canty was ‘scary and intimidating.’ ‘He doesn’t really talk to people too much. You have to talk to him first,’ Daniel Ali, 30, said. Another neighbor said she wasn’t surprised by the violent turn of events. ‘They were not a happy couple,’ Joanne Bagley, 52, told the Post. ‘They fight all the time on the block. I guess it was inevitable.’
The two children are now in protective custody.
