For nearly a week, Seraphina Pereira’s relatives taped missing-person flyers around the Rockaways and walked the beach she loved with a flashlight, while her body lay buried in a park a half mile from her home.
Rogelio Lozano-Garita, 26, of Queens, was charged with murder, criminal possession of a weapon, concealment of a human corpse and tampering with physical evidence, the NYPD announced Tuesday, Oct. 27, 2026. Pereira, 35, was found shot to death in a shallow grave at Rockaway Community Park in Edgemere on the night of Oct. 24. Lozano-Garita, her boyfriend, was taken into custody Oct. 26.
Pereira had been trying to end the relationship, police and her family said. “She was trying to get rid of him. She was trying to leave,” said Davonna Gray, 41, Pereira’s sister, who lives in Albany and traveled to the city to search for her.
Law enforcement sources said Pereira had been a victim of domestic violence. The couple had no history of domestic clashes involving the NYPD, police said.
A Wagon and Large Garbage Bags
Surveillance video recovered by investigators shows the two entering Pereira’s building together about 2 a.m. Oct. 19, police sources said. Roughly three hours later, Lozano-Garita walked out pulling a wagon loaded with large garbage bags. A little past 5 a.m., the video captured him dragging the wagon into a wooded stretch of the park at Beach 58th Street and Almeda Avenue. About 30 minutes after that, he is seen walking out of the trees without it.
Investigators believe he killed Pereira inside her apartment. He lives less than a mile from her home, according to cops.
Pereira was reported missing the morning of Oct. 19 from her home in the New York City Housing Authority’s Ocean Bay Apartments on Beach 54th Street. The NYPD released her photo and asked the public for help finding her Oct. 22. Two days later, just before 10 p.m., her decomposing body was found near a cricket field in Edgemere, wrapped in a blanket in a pit, police said.
The city medical examiner ruled her death a homicide Oct. 26, finding gunshot wounds to the head, neck and torso. The wounds included a shot to the forehead, police sources said.
Hostage Negotiators Find an Empty Apartment
On the evening of Oct. 26, police and hostage negotiators converged on the Ocean Bay Apartments, believing Lozano-Garita was barricaded inside Pereira’s home. The apartment was empty. He was detained later at another location nearby.
Accounts of Pereira’s family differ. Relatives said she had four children — her oldest son, 14, who is disabled and lives in a facility in Yonkers, and a 13-year-old son, a four-year-old son and a three-year-old daughter who lived with her in the Rockaways. Other accounts describe her as a mother of three. Lozano-Garita is the father of her two youngest children, relatives said.
‘I’m Innocent!’ on the Way to Court
“I’m innocent! I’m innocent!” Lozano-Garita shouted Tuesday afternoon as officers led him out of the 101st Precinct stationhouse in Far Rockaway to be arraigned in Queens Criminal Court. He grinned as he was transported to the Queens Criminal Courthouse.
His brother, Carlos Lozano, 27, spoke in his defense at the courthouse, saying he knows his brother and believes him. The last time he saw Lozano-Garita and Pereira together, he said, was at their son’s birthday party earlier in October, where they looked like a happy, normal couple. He said whoever killed Pereira should surrender.
Gray said her sister loved dancing and kept her children with her. Pereira lost the father of her two oldest children about six years ago, Gray said; he died of a heart attack.
Lozano-Garita’s arraignment was still pending as of Tuesday, Oct. 27. He is presumed innocent of the charges.
The sisters lost their mother four years ago in November, Gray said. Now the family will bury Pereira around the same time of year.
Anyone who has experienced a crime, including domestic violence, can call New York City’s 24-Hour Hope Hotline at 1-800-621-HOPE (4673).