Ex-husband shocked by stabbing death of woman by enraged landlord in Queens triple slay (EXCLUSIVE)
One of the three victims cops say were stabbed to death by an enraged landlord in a Queens home was remembered Wednesday as a loving mom who was “full of life.”
“This is a big blow,” Steve Fields, the ex-husband of Coleen Caesar Fields, told the Daily News.
Caesar Fields, 51, was one of three victims found butchered inside the well-kept single-family home on Milburn St. in St. Albans on Tuesday morning after the homeowner, David Daniel, walked into the 113th Precinct station house and confessed he “did something bad,” cops say.
“It comes as a surprise,” Fields said. “She was a nice person, a very energetic person, full of life.”
Cops responding to the home found Fields dead from numerous stab wounds in a second-floor bedroom. A man and a woman were found stabbed to death in a basement apartment.
Police believe Daniel killed all three victims during an ongoing landlord-tenant dispute.
The downstairs tenants had not paid rent since the start of the COVID pandemic, a law enforcement source said. Recently, the couple agreed to start paying rent again, then appear to have reneged, according to the source.
Caesar Fields is believed to have been dating Daniel but may have also owed him back rent, the source said.
Cops charged Daniel with murder and weapon possession. His arraignment in Queens Criminal Court was pending Wednesday.
Police were alerted to the triple killing when Daniel walked into the 113th Precinct stationhouse around 7 a.m. Tuesday and told an officer “he was having issues with his tenants,” according to Kevin Williams, the NYPD commanding officer of Patrol Borough Queens South.
The officer asked for more information and Daniel “stated that he did something bad,” Williams added.
Daniel gave police his address and cops raced to his home on a dead-end street near Nashville Blvd. — where they found the three victims dead from stab wounds.
“The officers rendered aid and called for EMS,” Williams said at a press conference Tuesday. “The officers then went through the remainder of the house looking for additional victims and found an adult female … in the upstairs bedroom, also unconscious and unresponsive.”
Daniel immediately asked for an attorney and said nothing further about the killings. The knife he used had not been recovered by late Tuesday.
The landlord’s brother told The News that Daniel didn’t have a history of violence and comes from a close-knit family with roots in the island country of Jamaica.
“My brother is not a violent person,” the sibling said. “He doesn’t really go out here and look for trouble, you know? So this is, like, shocking to the entire family right now.”
