A 45-year-old woman who was found dead inside of a parked car in Brooklyn late Tuesday night had reportedly called her roommate to plead for help moments before she was fatally stabbed.
East New York resident Karen Ashley begged Diane Russell, 48, to come outside just before midnight Tuesday, police told the Daily News. The tabloid reports that when Russell ran outside to East New York's Blake Avenue she was too late—Ashley's slashed body was lying inside a parked Nissan Maxima and another vehicle was speeding away.
“When I rushed out, I saw the husband speeding off in his car," Russell told the News. “It was like a knot on my chest. She was my best friend.”
According to police, the slain woman's husband, 55-year-old Beresford Ashley, turned himself in to officers at the 78th Police Precinct in Park Slope Wednesday morning, hours after the body was discovered. (According to the NYPD, the couple resided at separate addresses.)
Initially labeled a "person of interest" by an NYPD spokesperson, Ashley has since been charged with murder and criminal possession of a weapon in connection to his wife's death.
“I think I committed an offense,” Beresford Ashley said at the police precinct, according to prosecutors. “I got in a fight with my wife in her car in front of her place.” Ashley was held without bail and arraigned Wednesday evening.
Previously, ABC reported that Ashley had been found with multiple slash wounds to her neck and body, while her husband was treated for a lacerated hand at Methodist hospital after turning himself in.
“There were signs. But even though they were signs, I didn't know he would go that far," Russell told the News as she described the Ashleys' relationship. "Every time he would come, he'd beg. So she always tried to give him a second chance."
