Man Brings Flowers To Ex, Then Shoots Her In The Face

Four days before Valentine’s Day, a crazed Queens man yesterday waltzed into a pharmacy, handed a bouquet of carnations and sunflowers to his estranged wife, who was working the register, and fatally shot her in the face, cops said. Ex-con Alexander Figueroa, 38, shot himself dead shortly after blasting Guimmia Villa, 32, the mother of his two sons, inside Crescent Chemists in Astoria.

He fled to his apartment in the nearby Ravenswood Houses and blew his brains out. Figueroa left behind a several-page-long confession, said Queens District Attorney Richard Brown. “He beat her up just a week and a half ago at her job and told her he would kill her if she didnt go back with him,” said Villas’ sobbing pregnant sister, Yajaira, 28. “He was angry she had rejected him.”

Last Friday, Figueroa again threatened Villa, demanding to see their kids, Alexander, 9, and Nelson, 6. “A.J. [Alexander] won’t listen to me when I tell him not to call his father and tell him stuff about me,” a worried Villa texted her sister. “He says he wants to see the kids in the morning and if he doesn’t, something’s going to happen.” Figueroa never showed, but on Monday, Villa went to court to renew an order of protection, her sister said.

“My poor daughter! My poor daughter,” Reyna Villa, 54, wailed after returning from Mount Sinai Hospital Queens, where the young woman died. Villa had emigrated from the Dominican Republic at the age of 6 and had undergone two kidney transplants in the last 10 years, said her uncle, Louis Villa. “She survived twice, and look at now. She died stupidly. No reason for it,” he said. Yesterday’s tragedy unfolded at 3:40 p.m., when Figueroa entered the pharmacy on 34th Avenue with flowers in hand.

The couple was together for about eight years before breaking up two years ago.

They were in the midst of a divorce and had a volatile relationship, including a history of run-ins involving police, sources said. One neighbor recalled a raging Figueroa kicking the door of Villas’ mother’s apartment, demanding to see his children. Figueroa’s pal Donte Wiggins said, “he was always complaining that she had orders of protection that kept him from his kids.” In December 2009, the two fought over text messages and Figueroa pushed Villa and snatched her purse. He returned it two days later and was arrested.

“She was at the counter working, and he pulled out a gun and shot her,” said her uncle. Figueroa, an unemployed tow-truck driver, was recorded on the pharmacy’s video surveillance system shooting Villa, Brown said. Villa had lived with her mother in the same housing project as Figueroa up until six months ago, when she moved to Flushing.

Villa had also caught Figueroa cheating, sources said. She had an order of protection against Figueroa in Queens, which expired last month, and another in Nassau County, which was due to expire in April. “She showed us his picture and said, ‘If you see him, call the cops,’” one neighbor recalled. “He was a bad man, and it was a shame he was able to hunt her down.” In 1994, Figueroa was busted for murder and sentenced to four to eight years, the sources said. His rap sheet also included numerous prior arrests for robbery and drugs, weapons and attempted-robbery.

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