Guihua Yu, mom of Yu Yao, breaks down at the sentencing in Queens yesterday of Carlos Salazar Cruz, who beat Yao to death with a pipe in a drunken rage. ((Pool Photo by Anthony DelMundo))
Carlos Salazar Cruz, the man who sexually assault and murder Yu Yao. ((Pool Photo by Anthony DelMundo) )
The mother of an aspiring lawyer from China who was sexually assaulted and beaten to death with a metal pipe by a drunken brute in Queens lashed into the killer yesterday as a judge slapped him with 22 years to life — but said he would have preferred to sentence him to death.
“You beast! Give me back my daughter!” Yu Yao’s mother, Guihua Yu, shouted in Mandarin as she pointed to her daughter’s murderer, Carlos Salazar Cruz.
“You have destroyed our lives. I wish a life of hell for you,” said the mother as she broke down in tears in the Queens courtroom.
“Sentence the harshest, the most severe punishment on this beast,” Yu tearfully beseeched the judge.
Queens Supreme Court Justice Richard Buchter said he was sickened by Cruz’s heinous crime.
“The facts of the crime deserve the death penalty,” Buchter said. “I really had a hard time keeping it together. It was awful, awful.”
Cruz, 29, pleaded guilty to the attack on Yao, 23, as she was bringing home groceries in Flushing on May 16 last year.
The drunken and high illegal Mexican immigrant dragged her into an alley, repeatedly struck her head with the length of pipe and used the bloody weapon to savagely sexually abuse her as she lay unconscious.
A good Samaritan heard Yao’s cries in the alley near Main Street and 41st Road and called police, who found Cruz blocks away covered in his victim’s blood with the pipe in hand.
“My world collapsed,” said Yu, who was granted a special visa so she could come from China for the sentencing.
A crying Cruz begged for forgiveness.
“I regret all that had happened. I ask for 1,000 times to forgive me,” said Cruz, who blamed “drugs and alcohol.”
The judge was having none of it.
“He wasn’t too drunk to hit her severely over the head. This is a crime of a psychopath, not an alcoholic,” said Buchter.
Noting that Cruz slipped into the country illegally, Buchter noted, “We need this defendant in this country like we need the plague.”