A homeless man allegedly strangled his girlfriend to death inside a Midtown hotel this week — but tried to pass it off as a deadly seizure, police said Thursday.
Kayla Estevez, 26, and her boyfriend Ernest Wright, 28, checked into the citizenM New York Times Square hotel last Friday, according to police and sources.
Five days later, Estevez, of Upper Manhattan, was dead and her boyfriend was in cuffs, cops said.
“I’m honestly distraught. I’ve already cried my heart out,” the woman’s brother Michel told The Post.
Michel said his sister suffered from mental health issues, describing her as manic and bi-polar. She would often disappear for days with her boyfriend doing drugs and drinking, he said.
She’d return with bruises all over but she “chalked it up to rough sex,” her brother said, calling the relationship “abusive.”
“He was manipulating the entire situation,” Michel said. “He would use her money to get a hotel room and all this stuff, to get food.”
Estevez was found dead around 1 a.m. in the hotel room on Broadway near West 50th Street after Wright called 911. He had claimed he went out to get food and returned 45 minutes later to find her on the floor, foaming from the mouth and turning blue, police sources said.
He told cops she had a history of seizures.
But an autopsy revealed Estevez had endured blunt force trauma to her body and throat, cops said. She died of throat hemorrhaging, the autopsy said.
Wright was arrested and charged with murder and criminal possession of a controlled substance, cops said.
“My sister was getting hit, in some weird way it made her feel something,” Estevez’s brother said. “My sister wanted to feel normal.”
He told the Post Estevez had met Wright during one of her hospital visits — and called him “pure garbage.”
“Honestly, I f—king hate this guy. I literally have to give this guy cash to get away from my family and he would leave and within a week he’d come back again and contact my sister and said, ‘I’m in love with her.’”
His sister’s death has left the family devastated, he said.
“I loved my sister like nobody else. When my sister passed away, I felt like the angel of death was surrounding me. My mom locked herself in the bathroom and was freaking out.”
