An arrest has been made in the choking death of a woman seen on video being dragged by her attacker outside a Times Square hotel, police said Tuesday.
The incident happened early on the morning of Oct. 29. Officers responded to a 1:16 a.m. call from Mount Sinai Hospital, where they were told that an unidentified, unconscious woman had been rushed in critical condition by medics and that, based on her injuries, she appeared to have been choked.
Police then went to where the woman had been picked up by medics — the Hotel Riu Plaza New York Times Square — and found surveillance video that showed a man dragging the woman in front of the hotel.
“It was a couple,” a hotel worker told the Daily News at the time. “They were together — they were fighting earlier.”
Police, though, said the victim and the suspect might not have known each other for long.
The victim, Leslie Torres, 23, died a week later on Nov. 4. She had lived at a homeless shelter on W. 45th St., between Eighth and Ninth Aves., that provides temporary shelter and stabilization services to single adults with the goal of moving them to transitional and permanent housing. The shelter is just more than a block away from where the woman was found unconscious by medics on Oct. 29.
On Tuesday, police said they arrested the man seen on the video and charged him with murder.
Further details were not immediately available.
