By Christina Santucci
A Woodhaven tenant, who was convicted of first-degree manslaughter in 1994, has been arrested and charged with killing his landlord, a prominent Pakistani immigration law consultant, according to the Queens district attorney’s office and the victim’s family.
Mostafa Omron, 53, was arrested Saturday and charged with second-degree murder and criminal possession of a weapon in the Oct. 23 murder of 54-year-old Yasmeen Rabbani, according to the Police Department.
Omron was remanded and was scheduled to appear in court Friday, the DA’s office said.
Rabbani’s grief-stricken son, who did not want to be identified, said he could not imagine why anyone would want to hurt his mother.
“It’s been tough,” he said, declining to comment further.
Last month, police responded to Rabbani’s home on 91st Avenue and 88th Street about a report of an elderly woman in need of assistance, according to the NYPD. Rabbani was discovered on the first floor of the house with puncture wounds to her throat and was pronounced dead, police said. There were no signs of forced entry, the Queens DA’s office said.
According to court documents from the DA’s office, Omron admitted to detectives that he punched Rabbani in the face, knocked her to the floor, attempted to strangle her and then stabbed her many times with a knife from the kitchen counter.
The day after Rabbani was found dead, her neighbor Grace Law wondered if police had questioned Omron in the murder.
“Something didn’t fit right,” she said of him.
The Brooklyn DA’s office confirmed that Omron was convicted of first-degree manslaughter in 1994 for a crime that took place in 1990.
According to a New York Magazine story from 1995, the victim in the 1990 manslaughter, Sumo Tatsumo, was stabbed 32 times.
Rabbani is listed as president of Can-Am, an organization that offers U.S. and Canadian immigration services, according to its website.
A native of Pakistan, Rabbani was the mother of a son and daughter and had two grandchildren, according to neighbors.
