Kabary Salem<\/a> guilty of first-degree murder in connection to the death of his daughter, Ola Salem, in 2019, Sunday announced in a press release.<\/p>\nKabary Salem will be sentenced at a hearing scheduled for November 26, Sunday said. He faces a mandatory sentence of life in prison.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors with the Office of the Attorney General presented evidence that Kabary Salem beat and strangled his 26-year-old daughter while they were in Palmyra to work on a restaurant he had purchased. He then disposed of her body in a park in Staten Island, prosecutors said.<\/p>\n
Ola Salem’s body was discovered near a walking path in Bloomingdale Park on October 24, 2019. An autopsy determined she died of strangulation and blunt force trauma.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe facts in this case show the defendant did the unthinkable \u2014 he murdered his own daughter, then tried to get away with it by disposing of her body,” Sunday said. “I cannot fathom a series of criminal acts more despicable, senseless, and purely evil. I commend the jury for their careful attention to the evidence and applaud our prosecutors and the investigators for their relentless pursuit of justice.\u201d<\/p>\n
The New York City Police Department investigated the case.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A few days after his initial interview with police, Kabary Salem fled to the Middle East until he was arrested there in December 2020, authorities said.<\/p>\n
In his initial interview with New York police in October 2019, Kabary Salem admitted that he and his daughter traveled together to Palmyra to paint a restaurant he co-owned. He claimed that after arguing with his daughter earlier in the day, she began to behave erratically. He claimed he saw her get into an unknown black sedan sometime after 9 p.m. and did not see her again.\u00a0<\/p>\n
At his trial, prosecutors presented surveillance footage and GPS data from the vehicle Kabary Salem rented that showed the vehicle was at Salem’s restaurant and at a nearby hotel on the night of October 23, 2019.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Video surveillance from the hotel showed there were two people in the vehicle when it arrived that evening, according to prosecutors.<\/p>\n
Using GPS data, investigators tracked Salem’s vehicle from the hotel to a Lowe’s store, where surveillance footage showed him, now alone, purchasing a shovel, according to testimony.\u00a0<\/p>\n
At 10:45 p.m., GPS tracking data indicated Salem’s vehicle returned to the hotel. Surveillance footage from the hotel at that time showed he was still in the vehicle alone, prosecutors said.<\/p>\n
When Ola Salem’s body was discovered, police also recovered a blue shovel \u2014 similar to one Kabary Salem was seen on video purchasing at Lowe\u2019s \u2014 at the scene, according to testimony. His DNA was also found under his daughter’s fingernails, prosecutors said.<\/p>\n
The case was prosecuted by Chief Deputy Attorney General Brian Zarallo and Senior Deputy Attorney General Lauren Eichelberger.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kabary Salem, 57, faces a mandatory sentence of life in prison after being found guilty of first-degree murder…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":15500,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[9,24,63,134,136,135],"class_list":["post-15499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-staten-island","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-staten-island","tag-staten-island-headlines","tag-staten-island-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15499","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15499"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15499\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15500"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}