The grieving father of a New York City nurse allegedly killed by her boyfriend in a murder-suicide has described the chilling words he heard during a desperate phone call.
Rudy Cantarini, a former police officer, spent 14 terrifying minutes on the phone Tuesday night as Juan Cornelio Diaz, 38, confronted his 37-year-old daughter, Andrea, inside their Bronx apartment.
He said he heard what appeared to be three gunshots, followed by his daughter screaming.
Diaz then told him: “She’s gone, Rudy,” the devastated father recounted to the New York Post.
When police arrived shortly after 9 p.m., they found Andrea, a nurse at New York City’s St. Barnabas Hospital, dead from a gunshot wound to the head in the couple’s bedroom.
Diaz, a Customs and Border Protection agent assigned to John F. Kennedy International Airport, was also found dead nearby with a gunshot wound to the head, according to the New York City Police Department.
Investigators are treating the case as a murder-suicide linked to a domestic dispute. Andrea’s father said she had planned to end the relationship and that Diaz “couldn’t handle it. He was a coward.”
“I was on the phone with her for 14 minutes while he was holding a gun to her head,” Rudy previously told the New York Daily News.
“I was begging for her life. And he ended up taking her life.”
Former police officer Rudy Cantarini spent 14 terrifying minutes on the phone Tuesday night as his 37-year-old daughter, Andrea, was fatally shot by her federal agent boyfriend. Source: Facebook
Andrea Cantarini and her boyfriend, Juan Cornelio Diaz, 38, were found dead from gunshot wounds to the head inside their Bronx apartment. Source: Instagram
Cantarini said his daughter called him from the apartment at 8:47 p.m. and warned: “He’s going to kill me and he’s got a gun to my head.”
“We tried and we begged, the both of us, to let her go. And he just wouldn’t listen.”
He recalled pleading with Diaz: “Please do not, do not kill her, Juan. It’s not too late, Juan, just let her go.”
“And he killed her. And then he committed suicide.”
“I have to live with this the rest of my life,” he said, describing Andrea as “the apple of [my] eye.”
She “was a beautiful woman inside and out” with “all kinds of friends,” he said. “She was a great mother, a great mother. She was a beautiful kid, family-oriented, domesticated.”
“We raised her to be a responsible adult,” he said of himself and Andrea’s mother.
Andrea and Diaz had a six-year-old daughter together, while Diaz also had a son from a previous relationship.
Andrea Cantarini, a nurse at St. Barnabas Hospital, had planned to end her relationship with Diaz, according to her father.
Her father called Andrea the apple of his eye and said she had many friends. Source: Andrea Cantarini / Facebook
Social media photographs showed the couple embracing at various events and appearing happy. Andrea’s father said he had not known Diaz to have any previous mental health problems.
However, Kaela, a downstairs neighbor, said she and her roommate heard the couple engaged in a loud argument earlier in the week.
“Me and my roommate were having a conversation about, like, at what point do we call the cops?” she told the Daily News.
“And then as soon as we had that conversation, they stopped.”
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE: Oliver Holt: Chelsea’s Rise to Title Contenders Stuns Rivals
Cantarini’s father said that on Tuesday, Diaz shut the door on Andrea and waved a gun at her while their daughter screamed and cried outside the room.
Andrea eventually took the young girl to her father’s home in Poughkeepsie before going to work, as relatives and friends urged her to leave Diaz.
“Her mother begged her not to go back to the house,” her father said. “Two girls at work, her best friends, begged her not to go back there because what happened in the morning was irrational.”
Andrea Cantarini and Diaz had a six-year-old daughter together, while Diaz had a son from a previous relationship. Source: Instagram
Andrea’s father said he was unaware of any mental health issues involving Diaz before Tuesday night’s shooting.
He acknowledged that he did not know precisely what had happened during the earlier confrontation. “I wish I did, because I would have called the police,” he told the Post.
“You’re waving a gun at my daughter — that’s way beyond normal,” he said.
Hours later, when Andrea returned to the apartment she shared with Diaz to collect clothing, her father said Diaz “was waiting for her in ambush.”
Soon afterward, neighbor Kaela said she and her roommate heard gunshots.
At first, they believed the noise came from trucks backfiring. They then heard “the thuds of the bodies, which we didn’t know at the time it was that.”
“It’s awful and upsetting and horrific,” she said of the deaths.
“It’s a scary world.”
Other residents of the couple’s former building said Andrea and Diaz had appeared to be a happy, successful family.
Neighbors in the couple’s former building said Andrea and Diaz appeared to be a happy and successful family. Source: Instagram
“I always saw them together,” said Karla Evangelista, 29, who connected with Andrea because they were both young mothers.
“She was very fit, gym girl, always with gym clothes… She was just amazing and so beautiful,” Evangelista said.
“I still don’t understand what led to this,” she added. “I honestly was so shocked that I didn’t sleep, because it was not the people I would have thought that would do that, and that that would happen to her.”
The couple had recently moved into a larger home, where their daughter was expected to have her own room. “They seemed like they had a nice relationship and they were so happy to move, to have now a bigger space for their daughter,” Evangelista said. Diaz had told her boyfriend, “We’re so happy because now she’s going to have her own room.”
Evangelista described Diaz as athletic, talkative and friendly.
“He was a good-looking guy, always wearing nice clothes, always biking or running,” she said. “He was outside with his daughter sometimes, playing right here in the parking lot. He would talk to us for like the longest, maybe an hour, standing there, just talking, catching up.”
“I’m telling you, I never thought this.”
The investigation remains ongoing. Police said they recovered the firearm believed to have been used in the murder-suicide.
A CBP spokesperson said the agency is cooperating with investigators.
If you or someone you know needs help, please call or text the confidential 24/7 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline in the US on 988. There is also an online chat available at 988lifeline.org.