Press Release

Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz announced today that Anthony Hobson, 51, has been sentenced to 26 1/3 years-to-life in prison for the February 2019 knife attack on his girlfriend, Jennifer Irigoyen, in Ridgewood, Queens.

District Attorney Katz said, “Today’s sentence brings the defendant to justice for a brutal crime. Inside the stairwell of her apartment building, the victim yelled out that the defendant was trying to kill her unborn child as he stabbed her in the neck, chest and abdomen.”

Hobson, of 64^th Avenue in Rego Park, Queens, was sentenced today by Queens Supreme Court Justice Michael B. Aloise to a term of 25 years-to-life in prison on the murder in the second degree conviction to run consecutively with the 1 1/3 to 4 years term on the tampering with physical evidence conviction. Hobson was also found guilty of criminal possession of a weapon in the fourth degree following a two-week-long jury trial.

District Attorney Katz said, according to trial testimony, on February 3, 2019, around 1 a.m., on the third floor of a residential building in Ridgewood, Queens, a neighbor ran into the hallway after hearing Ms. Irigoyen, a 35-year-old real estate agent scream, “Help! Help! He’s trying to kill the baby!” The neighbor saw the defendant repeatedly plunge a steak knife into the body of his neighbor.

Ms. Irigoyen was rushed to an area hospital, but she could not be saved.

Hobson fled the scene with the murder weapon – the knife was never recovered. The defendant left the state for Pennsylvania but turned himself in to law enforcement five days after the homicide.

Assistant District Attorney Rachel E. Buchter, Chief of the District Attorney’s Felony Trial Bureau III, prosecuted the case with the assistance of Assistant District Attorney Bryan Kotowski, under the supervision of Executive Assistant District Attorney for Major Crimes Daniel Saunders and Executive Assistant District Attorney for Trials Pishoy Yacoub.