The ex-con charged in the shocking killing of a beloved Manhattan grandmother found bound and gagged in her apartment was identified through a green rolling shopping cart he took from the victim’s home, new court documents reveal.
Terrence Moore, 53, was charged earlier this week with burglary and murder in the death of Maria Hernandez, 74, who was found beaten and asphyxiated at her Upper West Side home on Jan. 18.
Moore, who is on lifetime parole for a prior murder conviction, is believed to have broken into Hernandez’s West 83rd Street building and committed the heinous crime alongside suspect Lashawn Mackey, of Brooklyn.
According to the criminal complaint against him, Moore was identified based on surveillance footage of him toting a rolling bag recognized by Hernandez’s sister, Maria Terrero, as having belonged to the victim.
“At approximately 8:22 PM [on Jan. 18] Mackey and the same aforementioned male are observed walking together,” NYPD Det. Rachel Lutz wrote in the complaint of surveillance footage taken at Amsterdam Avenue and West 86th Street shortly after the attack.
“Mackey is pulling a green rolling shopping bag/cart and the other man is pulling a dark blue rolling Jansport backpack.”
Police searched the victim’s home for the bags but could find neither, according to the court document.
Investigators combed through surveillance footage to track Mackey and Moore and the bags in the days after the murder.
Mackey — who was known to residents of Hernandez’s building as a former substitute superintendent who went by “Frosty” — was arrested on murder and burglary charges on Jan. 21.
Later that day, surveillance stills from outside his Bergen Street, Brooklyn home showed Moore leaving with the green rolling bag in tow and later entering a building on Dean Street, according to the complaint.
An unnamed employee at that address identified Moore to police as a resident of the building, the court docs states.
Moore was arrested and ordered held without bail at his arraignment in Manhattan Criminal Court Wednesday. He is due back in court on Jan. 30.
The criminal complaint filed at his arraignment also includes chilling details about Mackey’s activities in Hernandez’s building on the night of the murder.
One female resident, who was not named, said the man she knew as Frosty came to her door around 7:18 p.m. on the night of the killing.
“‘Frosty’ stated that he was angry with the building’s super for reporting him to the police for a theft and that he had done something in retaliation,” the document states.
“When the resident pointed out there were cameras throughout the building, ‘Frosty’ replied that he had taken care of that.”
Another second floor resident attested that she saw Mackey and Moore attempting to enter the building earlier in the evening, around 5:50 p.m..
Hernandez’s death came as a terrible shock for her neighbors and family members, all of whom remembered her as a loving and generous person.
“She was a wonderful sister, wonderful mother, wonderful grandmother and wonderful friend,” her sister, Terrero, told The Post last week.
“It is sad. It is unfortunate,” neighbor Ballamoussa Kourouma said of the killing.
“It’s crazy how it went down. I would have never thought, to be honest, that that would happen here – never ever, not here.”