A Sunnyside couple was sentenced to 14 years in prison for a vicious attack on a Woodside man that was caught on camera by a neighbor. The video was posted to social media and went viral, seen by more than 20 million people in the days after the assault. QNS/file
Feb. 13, 2025 By Bill Parry
A married couple from Sunnyside was sentenced in Queens Supreme Court on Thursday to 14 years in prison for attempted murder in a brutal assault of a neighbor over a parking spot in March 2023.
Aruto Cuevas, 32, and Daisy Barrera, 28, of 48th Street, pleaded guilty to attempted murder in the second degree last month for attacking 28-year-old Wilson Chabla Lliguicota in an assault that stemmed from a previous dispute between the couple and the victim. A neighbor recorded the bloody beatdown, and the video went viral on social media, which was viewed by more than 20 million people in the days following the brutal assault.
According to the charges, on March 17, 2023, at around 3:40 p.m., Cuevas and Barrera were in front of the Lliguicota’s residence on 47th Avenue, between 48th Street and 49th Street, in Woodside, when the victim pulled up in his car and parked. Cuevas and Barrera had a dispute over a parking space with Lliguicota nearly a year earlier.
The couple, who had weapons, approached Lliguicota’s vehicle and attacked him. Cuevas stabbed him in the body with a folding knife, while Barrera used an aluminum baseball bat to strike him in the head repeatedly. After the assailants knocked him to the pavement, the bloody attack continued, with Cuevas stomping on the victim’s prone body several times while his wife swung away, striking the victim several times in his head.
Barrera smashed her in the arm with the bat and resumed her attack on Lliguicota with her husband. The altercation ended when police from the 108th Precinct in Long Island City arrived at the crime scene. Cuevas and Barrera retreated to their 48th Street apartment, where they were taken into custody following a 20-minute standoff.
EMS arrived at the location and rushed both victims to Elmhurst Hospital. Lliguicota had four stab wounds to his body and one to his face and required emergency surgery for severe brain trauma, removal of part of his skull, and the inducement of a medical coma to manage his extended care and rehabilitation needs. Lliguicota’s girlfriend, 22-year-old Delia Chimbay, saw the grisly scene on the street below from her partner’s apartment window and raced outside to intervene.
”This was a near deadly attack over a parking spot,” Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz said. “The defendants became irate to the point that they senselessly stabbed and beat a man with a metal baseball bat.”
Cuevas and Barrera pleaded guilty to attempted murder in the second degree on Jan. 7 before Queens Supreme Court Justice Mary L. Bejarano, who sentenced the pair to 14 years in prison on Thursday.
“This vicious assault — caught on video by another neighbor — shocked the city,” Katz said. “Just before the couple’s trial, the defendants pleaded guilty to attempted murder.”
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