The man accused of killing Queens jogger Karina Vetrano asked to see a picture of her after he confessed to her murder.
Chanel Lewis’s request came as he was being transported to central booking in February 2017, according to NYPD Detective Christian Quezada.
‘During the ride he asked me if the victim’s family was watching on the news, and he asked me if he could see a picture of her,’ Quezada testified on Tueday at a pre-trial hearing in Queens Supreme Court.
He added: ‘I said: “No”. I didn’t say anything to him.’
Quezada also said during the hearing that after he put Lewis in his cell, the 21-year-old said: ‘Tell my mother I’m sorry’.
The man accused of killing Queens jogger Karina Vetrano (left and right) asked to see a picture of her after he confessed to her murder
Chanel Lewis’s (pictured) request came as he was being transported to central booking in February 2017, according to NYPD Detective Christian Quezada.
Lewis, who’s accused of beating Vetrano’s face so badly her teeth broke after snatching her off a swampy running path, didn’t press the issue and sat silently for the rest of the ride.
On Monday, Vertrano’s parents, Cathie and Philip, sat in court and wept as they watched Lewis’s videotaped confession of the August 2016 killing.
Police claim the Lewis murdered Vetrano, 30, while she was on a run in Spring Creek Park in Howard Beach, Queens.
‘I was mad, I saw red,’ Lewis told cops in the video. The tape was recorded in February and played for the family on Monday during a pre-trial hearing to determine if it is admissible as evidence.
Philip and Cathie Vetrano (pictured, Tuesday exiting Queens Criminal Courthouse) sat in court as Lewis calmly confessed to the brutal beating and strangulation of their daughter on video
Police claim the 21-year-old murdered Vetrano, 30, on August 2, 2016, while she was on a run in Spring Creek Park in Howard Beach, Queens (Pictured, Lewis being ttaken into the 107th Precinct when he was arrested on February 5)
Lewis told them he grabbed Vetrano as she was jogging past him in a marsh-swamp area of Queens.
He said she clawed at his face as he beat her five times, knocking her unconscious and breaking her teeth.
‘She didn’t yell,’ the accused killer said in the video, with not even a flicker of emotion on his cold face.
‘She was finished. I finished her off, I strangled her. She fell into the puddle and drowned. I got up and wiped off the blood. And she was calm, she was in the pool of water.’
Lewis told police he grabbed Vetrano as she was jogging past him in a marsh-swamp area of Spring Creek Park in Howard Beach, Queens
The map above shows a map of where events occurred: (1) Karina Vetrano, 30, leaves her home in Howard Beach for a jog, (2) She is filmed on surveillance camera entering Spring Creek Park (3) Karina’s body is found in marshes in the park, and (4) Suspect Chanel Lewis, 21, is arrested at his home in East New York on February 5
He then gestured at his face and explained that her head was completely submerged in the water.
Shockingly, as he finished telling cops how he ended her life, he asked if there was a ‘restitution program.’ He seemed to think he could pay his way out of murder charges.
‘I can straighten out my stuff?’ he asked the prosecutor. ‘Well you’re the DA right? Where do we go from here? Is there a restitution program or something?’
In the tape he also insisted he didn’t molest her – as was suggested by cops, who found her with her jogging shorts around her ankles.
‘I didn’t do any of the stuff they said, sexual assault and stuff like that,’ he said in the tape.
He said that after hurting her he was ‘shaken up,’ and started to walk home to get some napkins to stop the bleeding from where she’d scratched his face (Pictured, Lewis being taken into the 107th Precinct when he was arrested on February 5)
He said she clawed at his face as he beat her five times, knocking her unconscious. He then said that he strangled her and then watched as she fell into a puddle and drowned
Philip Vetrano (pictured, left, with his daughter) told the New York Post that he lashed out at Lewis’ family when he saw them at the courthouse on Monday
He said that after hurting her he was ‘shaken up,’ and started to walk home to get some napkins to stop the bleeding from where she’d scratched his face.
Lewis told the police in the interview that he killed Vetrano because ‘a guy moved into my house and neighborhood.’
Police weren’t sure what that meant.
Lewis confessed to the crime after watching cartoons in a precinct all night. He was arrested on February 4, and initially refused to speak to police, asking instead to watch TV, a detective said in court on Monday, according to the New York Daily News.
‘He said he wanted to see cartoons, so we put cartoons on him through the night. He said he couldn’t sleep,’ Detective Barry Brown explained.
Philip Vetrano told the Post that he lashed out at Lewis’ family when he saw them at the courthouse on Monday.
‘His family left the courtroom,’ he said, explaining why he became so angry.
‘They couldn’t listen to his confession. We know where the coward got his cowardliness from.
‘The truth hurts. It’s pathetic. It’s just so tomorrow they can say their offspring is not guilty.’