Brooklyn Woman Charged With Murdering Guyanese Immigrant

Slain Guyanese immigrant Chinelle Latoya Thompson Browne.

News Americas, BROOKLYN, NY, Thurs. July 24, 2014: A 42-year-old Brooklyn woman has been slapped with second-degree murder charges for the murder of a Guyanese immigrant.

Leah Cuevas is scheduled to be arraigned at First District Court in Central Islip later today for the murder of Chinelle Latoya Thompson Browne, a missing mother of four, whose dismembered body parts were found in Bay Shore and Hempstead, Long Island over the past several weeks.

Suffolk County police said today Cuevas, who lives in the same Brooklyn apartment building as the victim, was arrested Wednesday morning with the help of the U.S. Marshals NY/NJ Regional Fugitive Task Force.

Two people walking to the ferry in Bay Shore discovered Browne’s “partially dismembered” body in a vacant Bay Shore lot used as a shortcut between a municipal parking lot and the Fire Island Ferry terminal on July 8th, police said.

The body was missing both arms and its head, police sources said at the time. The next day, a severed arm was found on the lawn of a home on Webb Avenue in Hempstead.

Another arm was found July 10 in a yard on Cornell Street, about half a mile from the first arm. On July 17, a human head was found in the yard of a home Boylston Street in Hempstead.

Police would not discuss the nature of the relationship between the two women.

Browne disappeared from her apartment at 346 Sumpter St. in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn. She was identified by the tattoos on her body. Her husband, who still lives in Guyana with their children, told Guyana media that he last spoke to his wife on July 5th before she headed to work at the department store, Century 21.

He said Browne and her landlord got into an argument Saturday, telling the Guyana Chronicle, “I know that the landlord is responsible for this.”