Family’s Deaths in Locked Apartment Were Murder-Suicide, the Police Say

The three men stood in the hallway facing an apartment locked on Monday afternoon’s fourth-floor door on the Upper West Side.

Mario Lopez was the building’s ex-superintendent, as was his son Edison, the current superintendent, who had not left his two children, aged 1 and 3, with their mother to babysit that day.

The door was closed, and no one was at the door, and neither was the door was closed. Lopez had brought his sister-in-law’s son — an excellent employee in a building across the street to see if the family was okay.

They cut the lock’s cylinder with tools that Mr. Lopez had used countless times to fix and enhance the co-op located on West 86th Street.

“We could see through the hole,” Mr. Lopez said in an interview. On the other hand, his daughter-in-law, Alexandra Witek, was splayed on the floor. “We saw her laying down with the blood already all over her.”

They called 911. The police, upon arrival at 328 W. 86th Street, were confronted by a depressing scene and found Mrs. Witek, 40, lying on the floor with her two children, Lucien Lopez, 3, and Calvin Lopez, 1, police officers said. The officers found two knives from the kitchen on the floor nearby. The three were fatally wounded and their throats cut.

In a different room, officers found Edison Lopez, 41, in a bed beside an unidentified knife. The knife had only one fatal slash at his neck.

Police officials have said they believe Edison Lopez had killed all three of them, then killed himself.

The family members, the police, and the tenants of the apartment located on West 86th Street said Mr. Lopez did not indicate something was amiss. Police never received domestic violence complaints in the building. He didn’t leave a note. Lopez did not leave messages or publish anything on social media to suggest he was a threat to his family.

He was with his children, wife, and a family member for a visit to the Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum in Manhattan in the morning on Monday, just hours before they were discovered dead, according to police.

He. Lopez had been preparing to relocate from Hastings-on-Hudson within Westchester County, less than 20 miles to the north of Manhattan, for a new position as per Joseph E. Kenny, the deputy chief of detectives in the New York Police Department. Chief Kenny stated that police are investigating whether the stress associated with the move was a factor in the murders.

In the morning, Mario Lopez still could not comprehend what he observed. Mario Lopez said he didn’t think his son was responsible.

“How would you feel if you found your two grandchildren and your son and your daughter-in-law laying there?” he asked.

The couple had known each other for all their lives. They grew up on the block, where kids of supers play at Riverside Park and between the prewar stately buildings. The small circle of those who care for other people’s homes is within a more extensive network that includes lawyers, doctors, and Broadway artists. It’s also where, such as the case of Mr. Lopez’s high-powered and. Lopez’s sons follow the path of a career set by their parents.

On Monday night, the police van carrying out a crime scene was set up in the front of the store in front of the dark green awning, which opens onto the lobby. The officers wore hazmat suits while they drove stretchers by the journalists, residents, and news photographers gathered in the street. One woman approached the doorman who died. He informed her. She was crying, “Ed, no, no. This is my friend.”

Supers and doorkeepers also arrived and had a chat with each other. Many said they’d been with the family for a long time and were unsure how to react.

The other, Alfonso Barrera, a retired super, claimed he was familiar with the Lopez family and observed his father. Lopez and his wife grow as they grow. Carlos Cabrera, a doorman next door, told Mr. Lopez that he would often take his son on a trip to Riverside Park, the little boy standing at the seat in front of an electric motorbike. “He had a beautiful family and he was a very nice person,” said Carlos Cabrera. Declared. “I couldn’t ever have said what’s wrong.”

Mrs. Witek, also known as Ola, was an educator at the Rodeph Sholom School nearby. “Our community was devastated to learn of the untimely passing of our longtime, beloved teacher,” Danny Karpf, the head of the school, told us via email.

Mario Lopez said his son and his wife. Witek had gone to the public Beacon High School together in the Manhattan neighborhood of Hell’s Kitchen. They later got married after they reached their 30s. “I never saw them fighting,” Mario Lopez said. “They actually were going to start a new life, a new job, in a better apartment building.”

Tenants who have lived there for a while said the tenant, Mr. Lopez, was composed, sensitive, and considerate, often fixing broken hinges on their doors and dishwashers. He was a part of maintaining the building’s cleanliness and was frequently observed watering the plants in the summer season.

Mario Lopez and several tenants have been referred to as tenants because Mr. Lopez was excited to find a new job outside of the city, where his family could have a three-bedroom home instead of the one-bedroom home he grew up in where he is now in the town. He was in the process of preparing to move in the next month.

“It was the right move,” said Lynne Allen, 72, who has been living in the apartment since 1981 and has met Ms. Lopez since he was ten.

“He was at the right age to move to a bigger building with more responsibility and more space,” she explained. “They are living in a single-bedroom apartment. It’s not a lot, aren’t they?”

On Tuesday morning, the warning tape hung around the building had disappeared. A flower arrangement of sunflowers was left on the stoop, along with two toy cars, one red and the other yellow.