Family and friends gathered in Bushwick on Wednesday to remember 41-year-old Eryka Caldwell, who police say was stabbed to death inside her apartment.<\/p>\n
Loved ones released balloons outside 276 Cooper St.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust in shock,\u201d said Caldwell’s childhood friend, Amber Ashmore. \u201cDisbelief. Like, there’s no way that I just spoke with her Saturday night on FaceTime.”<\/p>\n
Caldwell’s sister, Contessa Clark, says she was supposed to come from Indiana next week to visit her. Instead, she came to Brooklyn to plan her funeral.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is probably the worst news that I\u2019ve gotten,\u201d Clark said. \u201cEryka was just more than a sister to me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Police say Caldwell was found Sunday morning inside her apartment, lying in a pool of blood with multiple stab wounds.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust to hear it like the brutality of it all,\u201d Caldwell’s childhood friend, Anthony Crawford, said through tears.<\/p>\n
Investigators arrested 38-year-old Jonathan Fernandez.<\/p>\n
Family and friends say Fernandez was Caldwell\u2019s on-and-off boyfriend. They say the relationship had become dangerous.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere were big red flags,\u201d said Caldwell\u2019s friend Clarente Fisher.<\/p>\n
Fisher says Caldwell had called police on Fernandez several times.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know four times for sure,\u201d Fisher said. \u201cOne day she ran from him from her apartment and was in the car, like going down the wrong lane. The police had to pull her over and she\u2019s telling the police, I\u2019m running from my boyfriend.\u201d<\/p>\n
Family and friends claim Fernandez broke into Caldwell\u2019s apartment by climbing through her bedroom window and pushing out her air conditioner.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe was trying to get away,\u201d Fisher said. \u201cThursday is when they had an altercation and she put him out.\u201d<\/p>\n
Caldwell was a waitress in Coney Island, an event planner and a proud member of the LGBTQ community.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of the lives that’s been taken has been trans and from their boyfriends in a domestic violence situation,\u201d Fisher said.<\/p>\n
Friends say they hope her story encourages others in dangerous relationships to get help.<\/p>\n
\u201cHopefully her story will let them know that you can go get the help that you need to try to get out of that situation,\u201d Clark said.<\/p>\n
Fernandez remains in custody and is expected back in court on Friday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Family and friends gathered in Bushwick on Wednesday to remember 41-year-old Eryka Caldwell, who police say was stabbed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":238669,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[98,100,99,9,24,63],"class_list":["post-238668","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-headlines","tag-brooklyn-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238668","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=238668"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238668\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/238669"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=238668"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=238668"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=238668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}