The heartbroken father of a New York City nurse who was shot dead by her boyfriend in an apparent murder-suicide has opened up about what the killer told him in the aftermath.
Rudy Cantarini, an ex-cop, listened for 14 terrifying minutes over the phone Tuesday night as Juan Cornelio Diaz, 38, confronted his 37-year-old daughter, Andrea Cantarini, inside their Bronx apartment.
He has described how he heard what sounded like three gunshots and his daughter screaming.
At that point, Diaz told him: 'She's gone, Rudy,' the grieving father recounted to the New York Post.
When police then arrived at the scene just after 9pm, they found Andrea, a nurse at New York City's St Barnabas Hospital, dead from a gunshot wound to the head in the couple's bedroom.
Diaz, a Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agent based out of John F Kennedy International Airport, was also found lying dead from a gunshot wound to the head nearby, New York City police have said.
Officers are now investigating the incident as a murder-suicide that stemmed from a domestic dispute, as Andrea's father explained how she wanted to break up with Diaz and, 'He couldn't handle it. He was a coward.'
'I was on the phone with her for 14 minutes while he was holding a gun to her head,' Rudy previously told the New York Daily News.
'I was begging for her life. And he ended up taking her life.'
Rudy Cantarini, an ex-cop, listened for 14 terrifying minutes over the phone Tuesday night as his 37-year-old daughter, Andrea, was gunned down by her federal agent boyfriend. Source: Facebook
Cantarini and her boyfriend, Juan Cornelio Diaz, 38, were found dead in their Bronx apartment of gunshot wounds to the head. Source: Instagram
The elder Cantarini described how his daughter had called him at 8.47pm from her apartment, telling him: 'He's going to kill me and he's got a gun to my head.'
'We tried and we begged, the both of us, to let her go. And he just wouldn't listen.'
The heartbroken father said he remembered pleading: 'Please do not, do not kill her, Juan. It's not too late, Juan, just let her go.'
'And he killed her. And then he committed suicide.'
'I have to live with this the rest of my life,' he added, calling his daughter 'the apple of [my] eye.'
She 'was a beautiful woman inside and out' who 'had all kinds of friends,' the grieving father said. 'She was a great mother, a great mother. She was a beautiful kid, family-oriented, domesticated.
'We raised her to be a responsible adult,' he said of himself and Cantarini's mother.
Andrea Cantarini and Diaz were parents to a six-year-old daughter, and Diaz had a son from a prior relationship.
Cantarini, a nurse at St Barnabas Hospital, was going to break up with Diaz, her grieving father has said
He described his daughter as the apple of his eye and noted that she had a lot of friends. Source: Andrea Cantarini / Facebook
Photos shared on social media showed the couple happily embracing at various events. Cantarini's father has since said he was not aware of Diaz having any prior mental health issues.
But the couple's downstairs neighbor, Kaela, said she and her roommate heard the couple having a loud argument earlier in the week.
'Me and my roommate were having a conversation about like, at what point do we call the cops?' she told the Daily News.
'And then as soon as we had that conversation, they stopped.'
Then on Tuesday, Cantarini's father said Diaz had shut the door on his daughter, waving a gun at her, while their daughter was outside the room, screaming and crying.
Cantarini then brought the young girl to her father's house in Poughkeepsie and went to work, as her loved ones begged her to leave her longtime boyfriend.
'Her mother begged her not to go back to the house,' her father said. 'Two girls at work, her best friends, begged her not to go back there because what happened in the morning was irrational.'
Cantarini and Diaz were parents to a six-year-old daughter, and Diaz had a son from a prior relationship. Source: Instagram
Cantarini's father said he was unaware of Diaz having any mental health issues prior to Tuesday night's shooting
He admitted he didn't know exactly what happened during that early morning encounter, telling the Post: 'I wish I did, because I would have called the police.
'You're waving a gun at my daughter - that's way beyond normal,' he noted.
Hours later, when Cantarini went to get clothes from the apartment she shared with Diaz, her dad said, 'he was waiting for her in ambush.'
Soon, Kaela said she and her roommate heard gunshots.
At first, she said they thought the sound was simply trucks backfiring. But then they also heard 'the thuds of the bodies, which we didn't know at the time it was that.'
'It's awful and upsetting and horrific,' she said of her neighbors' deaths.
'It's a scary world.'
Neighbors in their former building have said Diaz and the victim seemed like a happy and successful family.
Neighbors in their former building have said Diaz and the victim seemed like a happy and successful family. Source: Instagram
'I always saw them together,' said Karla Evangelista, 29, who bonded with the victim over their both being young mothers.
'She was very fit, gym girl, always with gym clothes... She was just amazing and so beautiful,' Evangelista described the victim.
'I still don't understand what led to this,' she said. 'I honestly was so shocked that I didn't sleep, because it was not the people I would have thought that would do that, and that that would happen to her.
'They seemed like they had a nice relationship and they were so happy to move, to have now a bigger space for their daughter... He was saying to my boyfriend: "We're so happy because now she's going to have her own room,' Evangelista continued.
She described Diaz as athletic, talkative and friendly.
'He was a good-looking guy, always wearing nice clothes, always biking or running,' she said. 'He was outside with his daughter sometimes, playing right here in the parking lot. [He] would talk to us for like the longest, maybe an hour, standing there, just talking, catching up.
'I'm telling you, I never thought this.'
The investigation into the fatal shooting is now ongoing, but police said they have retrieved the firearm believed to have been used in the murder-suicide.
A spokesperson for CBP noted that the agency is cooperating with the investigation.
If you or someone you know needs help, please call or text the confidential 24/7 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline in the US on 988. There is also an online chat available at 988lifeline.org.
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