Press Release

Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz announced today that Edwin Sarmiento, 31, has been sentenced to 24 years in prison for stabbing and killing a 30-year-old woman in February 2020. The defendant pleaded guilty last month to manslaughter.

District Attorney Katz said, “The defendant showed no mercy when he grabbed multiple knives and plunged them into the body of this defenseless woman. With this last step in our judicial process, the defendant has been sentenced by the Court giving the family of the victim closure.”

Sarmiento, of Van Cleef Street, in Corona, Queens, pleaded guilty on March 11^th to manslaughter in the first degree before Queens Supreme Court Justice Kenneth Holder. Today, Justice Holder ordered Sarmiento to be incarcerated for 24 years, to be followed by five years’ post release supervision.

District Attorney Katz said, on February 8, 2020, shortly after 4 a.m. the defendant and the victim, Juliet Ximena Galindo Puentes, argued inside the bedroom of the home they shared. The heated discussion turned violent when Sarmiento grabbed a knife and stabbed the 30-year-old woman numerous times. Then, the defendant went to the kitchen for a bigger knife. He broke down a door to get to the woman again, as she tried to hide and protect herself. But the defendant continued the attack, stabbing her with the second knife and then fleeing the apartment. The defendant was apprehended a short time later a nearby gas station. He was still wearing the blood-soaked clothes and carried a bag filled with money, phones, passports and other belongings.

Emergency medical responders rushed Ms. Galindo Puentes to a nearby hospital, where she was pronounced dead.

Senior Assistant District Attorney Tara DiGregorio, Assistant Deputy Bureau Chief of the District Attorney’s Human Trafficking Bureau and formerly with the DA’s Homicide Bureau, prosecuted the case under the supervision of Assistant District Attorneys Peter J. McCormack III and John Kosinski, Senior Deputy Bureau Chiefs, Karen Ross, Deputy Chief, and under the overall supervision of Executive Assistant District Attorney for Major Crimes Daniel A. Saunders.