News: 23-Year-Old Woman Murdered in NYC
(Long Island, N.Y.) In the early hours of last Sunday a twenty-three-year-old woman named Sarah Coit was killed by her thirty-three-year-old boyfriend. The two lived together and it is believed that they were arguing prior to the incident. Coit was stabbed repeatedly and savagely, and her killer has been charged with second-degree murder.
The boyfriend, who had seven prior domestic violence incidents between 2001 and 2004, was arrested last year on unrelated assault charges. The previous domestic violence incidents involved two of his past girlfriends. After turning himself in, he was held without bail and placed on a suicide watch.
Coit had been planning to leave her boyfriend, whom many referred to as abusive and controlling. Sources say she had arranged for her parents to help her with the move. Instead, reports have stated that her boyfriend deliberately stabbed her in the face with knives from a wooden butcher block. Sources claim that he intended to prevent her from leaving and was set on destroying her beautiful face.
As part of his taped confession, her boyfriend stated that she began the incident by coming at him with a knife. Nonetheless, Coit was nearly decapitated and suffered a skull fracture from a blunt object prior to death. The fatal blow was to the left side of her back, leaving a gaping wound that exposed her organs. Some reports have claimed that a piece of knife was recovered from one of her head wounds.
Neighbors of Coit say that she was screaming for help during an estimated twenty minutes between two and two-thirty Sunday morning. Neighbors say that they tried to locate her by yelling back, but she wasn’t able to reveal her location. Her boyfriend fled the scene by taking a cab to Penn Station, still in bloody clothes, and called his father for advice.
After his father persuaded him to turn himself in, he told the police that he fought with his girlfriend and didn’t know if she was still conscious. The 9th Precinct was just ten blocks away, and he arrived within an hour after the incident.
Police arrived at the third-floor apartment in the Lower East Side and asked Coit if she was capable of letting them into the locked entrance. When she said she couldn’t, police kicked open the door. Despite efforts of emergency personnel, Coit was pronounced dead at Beth Israel Hospital.
Coit was a native of Riverside, Connecticut and attended Greenwich High School where she starred on the cross-country team. She attended Hunter College and worked for the company Lacoste. She moved to New York City in 2006 to pursue dreams in advertising, specializing in visual arts.
Reports claimed that her parents and siblings were supportive of her ambitions, and friends have described her as “beautiful, popular, creative, and intelligent.” Her former coach stated that she really enjoyed playing on a team. A former boyfriend claimed that she was a good person and friend, and never had anything bad to say about the man she lived with.
The Manhattan District Attorney is trying to make repeated domestic assault offenses a felony. The Mayor’s Office to Combat Domestic Violence and the New York City Family Justice Center has taken steps to adjust to the influx in the number of domestic violence arrests and indictments in recent years.
