Jennifer Irigoyen: Pregnant real estate agent found stabbed to death in NYC apartment lobby

A pregnant woman was fatally stabbed in the lobby of her New York apartment.

Jennifer Irigoyen, 35, was dragged screaming from her apartment and then stabbed to death in the vestibule of her building as she pleaded for the life of her unborn baby, witnesses and police said.

The Sunday morning killing was caught on camera. The building super Lisa Raymos watched the surveillance footage and said the attacker targeted Ms Irigoyen’s stomach.

“He’s got a knife! He’s going to kill the baby!” Ms Irigoyen, who was five-months pregnant, shouted around 1 am as the suspect dragged her from her third-floor walk-up building and down the building’s entranceway.

The New York Police Department is investigating the killing as a domestic incident and are looking for Ms Irigoyen’s boyfriend for questioning.

Maurice Roman Zereoue, a resident living in the same floor as Ms Irigoyen, said he peeked out of his door when he heard the pregnant woman screaming. He told the New York Post that suspect covered his head with a hoodie and that it looked like he had a butter knife in his hands.

“I seen him dragging her down the stairs,” Mr Zereoue said. “I seen her hands hanging on” to a hallway wall for dear life.

As Mr Zereoue’s girlfriend called 911, the horrified witness ran down to the lobby where he found Ms Irigoyen gasping for air and her dog loyally sitting by her side.

“She was at the bottom of the stairs bleeding out,” Mr Zereoue added. “She had a little dog with her, a pug, I think. Its feet were soaked in blood.”

The authorities said Ms Irigoyen had defensive wounds on her hands. “She was fighting for her life,” an officer said.

Ms Irigoyen tried to name her killer, but didn’t have the strength to do so from the blood pooling her throat.

“I asked, ‘Do you know who he was?’ And she kept nodding yes and waving her arm,” Mr Zereoue said. “She couldn’t speak.

“I kept telling her, ‘Hang on, hang on, help is coming.’”

She was rushed to Wyckoff Hospital, but neither she or her unborn child survived.

The killer fled the scene, but the police say the boyfriend is “definitely a person of interest”.

“Don’t you think if your girlfriend got stabbed, you’d go to the police and say, ‘What happened?’? Well, he hasn’t come to us yet,” a police source said.

Ms Raymos, the super of the apartment building, said Ms Irigoyen was a quiet tenant living alone and often kept to herself. She described her as kind and a “sweetheart”.

Ms Irigoyen was classically trained as a pianist. For a living, she sold luxury hopes all over Manhattan and worked as a professional Latin ballroom dancer and Zumba instructor. She leaves behind a 12-year-old son. The father of her son is not suspected in her killing.