Elderly Guyanese man mugged, killed in Queens
[NY Daily News] – Dhanraj Mangra and his wife escaped the violence of Guyana to start over in New York City.
Twelve years after they made the move to safer shores, the 68-year-old father of five was dead.
Mangra was found unconscious on Jamaica Ave. near 207th St. in Queens Village at 8:30 p.m. on January 3, 2018, cops said.
He died at Queens Hospital after a pair of muggers attacked him and he slammed his head against a parked car, his heartbroken wife said Thursday.
“It’s not right that they killed him,” Bibi Mangra, 63, said about the two creeps, as tears streamed down her face.
“They want his wallet? Take it. But don’t kill him. He’s an old man, he’s not a young person.”
On the night the retired UPS security guard died, his wife, a home health aide who works on Long Island, returned home, fell asleep and left before sunrise the next morning, thinking her husband was still in bed.
“I walked out quietly because I usually don’t wake him,” Mangra said.
“I didn’t even realize he still wasn’t home. When I reached work, I kept calling his phone and there was no answer. I started calling my children but they couldn’t reach him either.”
“Then the hospital called me and said he died,” she said, choking back tears.
Mangra knew something was off when doctors said her husband died of a heart attack.
“He was a very healthy person,” she explained.
“I know he’s a strong person. He never complained about stomach pain, anything. I was so surprised to hear (about the heart attack).”
She grew more suspicious when she prepared her husband’s funeral.
“At the funeral parlor, when I was putting on his clothes, I saw cuts on his forehead and his chin,” she said.
“Somebody definitely did this to him.”
Police later told her that they are looking for two men who knocked him down and robbed him. As Mangra fell, he hit his head on a parked car, cops said. The heartless muggers ran off with his iPhone, his credit cards and cash, police said.
The Mangras were married for 46 years and have five grown children.
“He was a very good husband,” the grieving widow said.
“When I would come home, he would always be cooking something for me.”a