Brooklyn police arrested 38-year-old Jonathan Fernandez for allegedly stabbing his 41-year-old transgender fiancee Eryka Caldwell to death in her Bushwick, New York apartment on Sunday morning. Caldwell had reportedly tried to kick Fernandez out of the apartment before the slaying, The New York Post reported. Fernandez’s lawyer is now claiming that she attacked him with a knife first and he killed her in self-defense.
Caldwell texted 911 on Sunday morning. When police arrived at her apartment around 8:50 a.m., they reportedly heard Caldwell screaming and yelling, “Help me, he’s stabbing me!” Police had to enter the apartment by pushing in a window air-conditioning unit and climbing through. There, they found Caldwell’s body had been stabbed multiple times, with her throat slit. Fernandez reportedly sat on the couch with her bloodied body at his feet.
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Police said that they had previously checked on domestic disputes between the couple. Fernandez has been charged with second-degree murder and criminal possession of a weapon and is currently awaiting a court hearing in Riker’s Island Jail without bail. He faced arrests all the way back to 2015 for robbery, burglary, and theft of service charges. He had also allegedly assaulted Caldwell in 2024, law enforcement sources told the Post.
In his Monday court hearing, Fernandez’s defense lawyer claimed that Caldwell began swinging a knife at Fernandez first, leading him to defend himself with a knife. The lawyer requested a psychiatric hearing for his client.
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On Christmas Day 2022, Caldwell announced that she and Fernandez had become engaged. In a birthday post from April of that year, Caldwell wrote of him, “Beyond my dad he’s one of the only men that has loved me unconditionally! He’s not a perfect man but show me one who is!”
“He is one of the most selfless, sensitive, and generous people I know!” Caldwell wrote. “Thanks baby for loving me unconditionally even though I’m getting old!”
Caldwell’s sister, Contessa, told the Post, “She tried to find the good in everybody…. If there was just a monster or evil, she still tried to find the smallest good in that person. And this time, [there] just was no good for her to find or her to fix.”
The sister said that police had visited the couple for at least two instances of domestic violence in the past, but while she was relocated to an abuse shelter, he never went to jail for the alleged abuse. Caldwell moved to New York City from Kentucky at age 18 and had lived in the apartment where she died since March.
“When it came to her relationships, if it was abusive or anything, she didn’t allow me to know,” the sister said. “I just wish she would have reached out for help or told somebody in code or something. Like, what was going on, so she could have gotten the help or somebody could have come down there.”
Caldwell recently celebrated her 41st birthday on April 10, and had made recent Instagram posts expressing love for her mother, who died on October 8, 2023. In January of that year, Caldwell announced that she had graduated from Bellevue University with a bachelor’s degree.
One Instagram commenter said that Caldwell was now in the afterlife with her mother. Another wrote, “You were truly a blessing! Your Soul was so beautiful and your light was radiant! You were a light that shined bright. A radiance that everyone felt. We were family! You were my Muva! I will love you always and forever! Until we see each other again. I love you.”
Approximately 54% of trans and non-binary individuals have experienced intimate partner violence in their lifetimes, according to the Human Rights Campaign (HRC). That’s higher than the 41% of women and 26% of men in the general population who have experienced such violence, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
A 2024 HRC report found that 75% of transgender people murdered in the prior year were people of color — 30% knew their attackers.
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