Mother Stabs Daughter’s Killer With Her Eyes

By MACKENZIE GANTER & JOANIE MARTINEZ

Clutching a gold-framed portrait of her daughter, the mother of a slain former model looked into the eyes of her daughter’s convicted killer in Manhattan Supreme Court Tuesday.

“I don’t have room in my heart for any hate for you, I only have room for my daughter,” said Petra Montañez-Vitale,72, a tiny woman who spoke with a big voice to Markeece Dunning, 21, at his pre-sentencing.

The defendant sat meekly in his chair and glanced at the photo once.

Dunning pleaded no contest to the 2011 murder of Jomali Morales, a former model turned massage therapist who was stabbed to death and found in an elevator of the Baruch Houses on the Lower East Side where she lived with her mother. Dunning also lived in the Baruch Houses.

“Every stab wound was tortuous for her,” added Montañez-Vitale, her voice breaking with emotion. “You didn’t do it once, you didn’t do it twice, but 19 or 20 times.” She wept describing the stab wounds on Morales’ neck and shoulders.

Forensic expect Lauren Thona, who performed the autopsy, showed the court photos from the crime scene and explained that 16 of the wounds were along the neck and shoulder puncturing a lung, chest cavity, the heart’s left ventricle and the fifth and sixth vertebrae on the spine. Two more were to the face and the most “significant wounds” were to her neck “severing both arteries.” The medical examiner said that Morales did not die immediately after being stabbed because she “inhaled and swallowed blood,” indicating she was “alive a couple of minutes before she died.”

“She didn’t die in peace,” Montañez-Vitale continued.”You did not let her.This is the daughter that you took from me…This woman had plans to live.”

The mother said that the victim planned to open a spa, even having “cards printed up.”