The two men accused of stabbing an off-duty NYPD detective in the Bronx earlier this month appeared in court Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Sneider Mejia, 24, and Dangelo Caraballo, 25, are facing several charges, including attempted murder, after they were arrested in Massachusetts last week and extradited back to New York, according to officials.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s the first court appearance in the city for the two men, who faced a judge at Bronx Criminal Court.<\/p>\n
Mejia and Caraballo pleaded not guilty, officials said.<\/p>\n
According to the Bronx District Attorney\u2019s office, they\u2019re accused of stabbing 33-year-old Jose Mercedes 10 times during an attempted robbery in the Norwood section of the Bronx earlier this month.<\/p>\n
Mercedes was hospitalized after the stabbing, and spoke out publicly for the first time on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have 10 stab wounds. I\u2019m not sure about the exact number of stitches. I\u2019m happy to be standing. Emotionally, I feel happy to be alive. I wanna get back to work whenever I fully recover. I dedicate my life to investigating crime, and I think that it\u2019s very important to keep our community safe for all of us,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Some members of the NYPD were among those sitting in the gallery.<\/p>\n
Some family members of Mejia and Caraballo cried when the men were led back into the holding area.<\/p>\n
During the arraignment, the judge agreed with the Bronx DA\u2019s office that the two men pose a flight risk because they fled the city after the incident before being caught by federal authorities.<\/p>\n
\u201cEventually a few days after this incident occurred, they were apprehended, hiding in the basement in a recording studio in the state of Massachusetts, not only that, the allegations go further that they cut their hair, both of them, and again in an attempt to disguise themselves,\u201d said Paul Irace with the Bronx District Attorney\u2019s Office. \u201cRespectfully, I believe that every factor shows that both of these defendants are the epitome of a flight risk.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to Irace, the top charge carries a minimum sentence of 20 years to life and a maximum of 40 years to life.<\/p>\n
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security says Mejia and Caraballo, who are originally from the Dominican Republic, are \u201cillegal aliens\u201d and have criminal histories.<\/p>\n
The judge ordered the two men to stay behind bars without bail until their next hearing on Dec. 3.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The two men accused of stabbing an off-duty NYPD detective in the Bronx earlier this month appeared in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":373797,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[387,25,128,9,24,6019,63,308,129,131,130,27,200],"class_list":["post-373796","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-the-bronx","tag-app-public-safety","tag-app-top-stories","tag-bronx","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-noorulain-khawaja","tag-nyc","tag-public-safety","tag-the-bronx","tag-the-bronx-headlines","tag-the-bronx-news","tag-top-stories","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373796","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=373796"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373796\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/373797"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=373796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=373796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=373796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}