Sarai Sierra (EPA)
DIRTBAG: The alleged killer of Sarai Sierra (inset), identified as Ziya T., is in custody of Turkish cops yesterday. (
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She fought her attacker to the bitter end.
The Staten Island mom who was bashed to death by a Turkish vagrant desperately tried to fend off her raging assailant for half an hour, her alleged killer said yesterday in a grisly confession to cops.
The suspect, identified only as Ziya T., claimed he had been boozing and sniffing paint thinner just before he saw Sarai Sierra, 33, snapping photographs near a set of railroad tracks in Istanbul at 2:30 p.m. on Jan. 21.
Ziya T. said that he tried to kiss Sierra when she drew near but that the frightened tourist bashed him with her phone.
“She resisted and hit me in the middle of my forehead with her cellphone, and my nose began to bleed,” he told cops, according to the Turkish newspaper Hurriyet.
“I got angry and hit her as hard as I could.”
He said he socked Sierra with his fist and sent her tumbling down an embankment, where she came to rest next to a tunnel entrance.
The suspect, who turned himself in to authorities as he crossed the border from Syria back into Turkey on Saturday, said he followed his stunned victim and again tried to kiss her.
During the 30-minute, life-or-death struggle, Sierra grabbed a rock and smashed it into her attacker’s face.
“She picked up a rock and began to hit me with it,” he said. “Then I really lost it. I also picked up a rock and hit her head with it a few times.”
He said he left the audibly “croaking” Sierra for dead.
Ziya T. returned to the scene of the crime the next day and covered the corpse in blankets, placed her clothing in a garbage can and tossed her phone and iPad into the Bosphorus Sea.
Sierra, an amateur photographer, had embarked on a solo trip to Turkey on Jan. 7. Her badly beaten body was found on Feb. 2.
The suspect remained in Istanbul after the slaying until he heard about the case while sitting in a cafe. He said he had no idea the woman was American until he saw media reports.
Suddenly desperate for an escape, Ziya T. said he sold off his meager possessions — a bed and a handcart — for 60 Turkish liras to pay for a bus trip to his brother’s home in a remote region near the Syrian border.
Figuring that his best chance to elude capture would be slipping into the chaos of Syria’s civil war, Ziya T. said he walked over the border and told rebel fighters there that he had come to aid in their struggle.
He sustained a leg wound in a battle and was hospitalized for 10 days, he told police. He decided to turn himself in to Turkish officials after he recovered because he knew they were closing in, he said.
Other Turkish news reports contend Syrian fighters eventually learned of his wanted status and turned him over to Syrian police who arranged for a transfer to Turkish authorities.
Turkish investigators have linked DNA from Ziya T.’s relatives to matter found underneath Sierra’s fingernails.