Waldo Mejia was arrested in 2015, 2017, 2019 and 2024, according to New York City police records.
But he was out on the street Friday when 14-year-old Caleb Rijos was stabbed to death in the Bronx while walking to school, according to the New York Post.
Mejia, 29, was arrested for the crime Saturday with NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch noting that there was little to smile about.
“Today, a 14-year old-boy is dead. A family is devastated. A city is in mourning, and the systems that we have in place to deal with repeat offenders and individuals with severe mental health issues continue to fail us,” Tisch said.
After being stabbed twice in the chest, Rijos called his father
“You know, he called his father and told his father that he couldn’t breathe and that he was scared, and his father heard him dying,” Bronx District Attorney Darcel Clark said.
“It’s unfathomable to think about the level of this tragedy,” he said.
Mejia was arrested by police on a knife charge in 2015, and a gun charge in 2017, before facing burglary and arson charges in 2019 after the lobby of a former girlfriend’s building was set on fire. The 2019 charges were pleaded down to reckless endangerment, and Mejia was handed a conditional discharge
Charges against Mejia did not end there.
In November, he was charged with stabbing a Ring doorbell camera. Tisch said Mejia was released on his own recognizance, noting that crime was not one where Mejia could have been locked up and required to post bail.
US NEWS
Bronx, New Yorkpic.twitter.com/zXpW0libkM
Waldo Mejia, aged 29, Arrested for Stabbing Death of 14-year-old Caleb RijosThe Bronx man, identified as Waldo Mejia, who is accused of the murder of the 14-year-old, is also suspected of slashing this 38-year-old man.
The…
— TT (@6002_TT) January 12, 2025
“The status quo is just not working for New Yorkers,” Tisch said Saturday.
“We do not have a system that puts the rights and needs of victims first. And my message to New Yorkers is something has to give,” she said.
Tisch said once again New York City faces the “brutal, unprovoked killing of a 14-year-old child by a career criminal or recidivist over and over again, with [a severe] history of mental health interactions with the NYPD.”
“How many times [does] the mayor have to keep talking about this before something changes? I’m hopeful something will change. Let this be a call to action,” Tisch said.
On Sunday Jan. 5, five days before Rijos was killed, a 38-year-old man was stabbed at a subway station — a crime police have linked to Mejia.
“During the course of this homicide investigation, an officer assigned to the Transit Bureau recognized that the suspect in this murder looked very similar to another perpetrator that had committed a stabbing on East 138th Street on the subway stairs,” NYPD Chief of Detectives Joe Kenny said, according to WABC-TV.
Tisch said that when Mejia was arrested, he was “wearing the same sneakers and pants he wore during the homicide, and he was in possession of a bloody knife,” according to CBS.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.
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