The three Bronx cops who nabbed the suspected killer of a female NYPD traffic agent after noticing his lousy parking job were praised for their instincts to stop and question the suspect based on his suspicious behavior.
“If it hadn’t been for them seeing [the suspect’s] suspicious activity and pursuing it, we may never have found [the victim],” an NYPD spokeswoman said.
Veteran police Sgt. Miguel Sanchez, 46, was in an unmarked car with two plainclothes officers, Sean Kelly, 28, and Anderson Ortiz, 25, about 4:30 a.m. Sunday when the trio first spotted a livery car half up on the sidewalk outside an apartment building on Walton Avenue, sources said.
The cops approached the driver inside the vehicle, Moises Martinez, 52, and asked what he was doing.
“He told them he was moving and throwing out trash,” one source told the Post.
They told him to move the car and Sanchez noticed Martinez was sweating and appeared nervous, sources said.
So the cops parked down the street and watched as Martinez drove around the block several times over a half hour, then parked in front of a nearby hydrant and go inside the building.
When he hadn’t emerged 30 minutes after going indoors, they knocked on Martinez’s door.
The cops asked Martinez if he lived there with anyone, and he replied, “I live with my wife,” sources said.
Then, “they ask where she is, and he says ‘I killed her,’ ” a source said.
The officers later found the body of Yajaira Reyes, a 29-year-old NYPD traffic agent, wrapped in sheets and duct tape in a red garbage bin in the home.
One law-enforcement source called the bust an example of perfect police tactics.
“He gave them the, ‘Oh, s–t’ look and the wrong answers, and they pursued it. There’s something wrong with his eyes, the way he’s talking, his body language, and you pursue it,” the cop said. “In this case, instead of finding a gun, they found a body.”
Martinez was ordered held on a second-degree murder charge yesterday.
kconley@nypost.com