NYC Pastor Who Ran Over Estranged Wife and Attacked Her With Machete Sentenced To 23 Years In Prison

Former New York City Pastor Victor Mateo will spend more than two decades behind bars for the brutal murder of his wife in front of his grandchildren.

According to a release from Bronx District Attorney Darcel Clark, Bronx Supreme Court Judge Margaret Clancy sentenced Mateo to 23 years in prison for running over his wife Noelia Mateo multiple times before stabbing her repeatedly with a machete.

Mateo, who served as a pastor at The Redeemer Church in the Bronx, pleaded guilty to one count of first-degree murder in November 2020. According to Law & Crime, the sentence aligns with what prosecutors recommended to the court after reaching a plea agreement with Mateo’s lawyers.

“The defendant not only took the life of a Bronx grandmother but also inflicted a possible lifetime of trauma to her grandchildren who were witnesses to this horrific crime,” Bronx District Attorney Clark said in the release. “The defendant and the victim had been estranged for approximately a month before he killed her. He pleaded guilty to first-degree Manslaughter in November.”

In addition to his sentence, Mateo will also receive five years of post-release supervision and finalized orders of protection, mandating he not contact the grandchildren who witnessed the murder.

Mateo and his wife had been estranged for about a month, when on the morning of Oct. 3, 2019, he parked outside of his wife’s apartment in the Throgs Neck neighborhood of the Bronx and waited.

Noelia came outside around 7 a.m. with her two grandchildren to drive them to school. When the three reached Mateo’s vehicle, the former pastor hit the gas and “struck her with his vehicle.” Noelia then hid under her car to avoid Mateo, who got out of his car and into his wife’s car, running over her several times.

Mateo then got out of his wife’s car and got a machete from his car then “hacked her with a machete” multiple times while the two grandchildren watched in horror.

A joint investigation between the NYPD, Pennsylvania State Police, and the U.S. Marshal’s Service led to Mateo’s arrest approximately one week after the incident.

In addition to murder, Mateo was also charged with second-degree murder, criminal possession of a weapon, and endangering the welfare of a child, but those charges were dropped as part of the plea agreement.