Yonkers man pleads guilty to manslaughter in garage stabbing he says was self-defense

An owner of a cab company who fatally stabbed a man in a fight after the victim had broken into his car in a Yonkers parking garage pleaded guilty Monday to a lesser homicide charge and will likely avoid state prison time.

Necker Charles, 52, who had claimed self-defense in the death of Luis Sanchez last year, pleaded guilty to second-degree manslaughter and tampering with physical evidence after prosecutors offered him a choice of two years in the Westchester County Jail or one to three years in state prison. State Supreme Court Justice James McCarty accepted the plea deal and scheduled sentencing for Oct. 21.

Charles, of White Plains, will decide then which sentence to accept, but his lawyer, Aaron Goldsmith, said he will likely choose to go to the jail in Valhalla.

Goldsmith said Charles immigrated to the United States, became a citizen, raised three daughters and ran a business. He had never even been cited for taxi violations, Goldsmith said, let alone crimes, before his arrest.

"In every sense Mr. Charles is the American Dream and he was put into a terrible circumstance in that garage," he said.

Charles confronted Sanchez on the night of April 11, 2023, after getting a call that someone was breaking into his car in the garage at 25 Prospect Street. After the stabbing, Charles left and was seen on video surveillance throwing the knife into a sewer in Getty Square, where it was later recovered.

Charles told detectives the following night that when he showed up at the garage Sanchez was under the hood of the car, according to detectives' account of Charles' statement to them. He asked him what he was doing and Sanchez insisted the car was his. A fist fight began and Charles claimed Sanchez accosted him with a knife but he managed to get it away from him and stabbed Sanchez in the chest. He kept striking Sanchez with the knife because Sanchez continued fighting, he told the detectives.

Charles claimed he disposed of the knife because he didn't know what to do with it and threw his bloody clothes down the garbage chute of his apartment building.

Charles was initially charged with first-degree manslaughter, which carried a mandatory state prison term of between five and 25 years. Second-degree manslaughter, which required Charles to have acted recklessly and not intentionally, has a maximum prison term of five-to-15 years but incarceration is not mandatory.

According to court documents, a witness told police they saw Charles pull out a knife and begin attacking the victim with it. But Goldsmith said that the witness' vantage point was obscured and maintained that he likely spotted the knife after Charles had taken it from Sanchez.

The 33-year-old victim had a history of mental health issues. When he was found dead in the garage several hours after the altercation he had cellphones and credit cards belonging to Charles in his pockets.

This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: Yonkers man pleads guilty to manslaughter in garage stabbing he says was self-defense