Queens Man Charged in Fatal Shooting of Estranged Wife’s Partner Amid Citywide Uptick

An uptick in domestic homicides in New York City punctures the myth of urban safety gains and exposes persistent failings in preventing intimate partner violence.

New York City prides itself on its resilience, its inhabitants serenely negotiating the unpredictabilities of urban life. Yet in the tranquil neighbourhood of College Point, Queens, that illusion was shattered on a Thursday night when Antonio Cantor, aged 50, was gunned down outside his own home. The alleged assailant: José Centeno, 55, the estranged husband of Cantor’s girlfriend, who turned himself in to police hours later. As dusk fell, neighbours—unaccustomed to such violence in this pocket of Queens—heard the staccato of five to eight gunshots pierce the night.

The facts are sadly unambiguous. According to the NYPD, Centeno faces murder and illegal weapons charges after surveillance footage captured a violent altercation between the two men, culminating in what prosecutors will doubtless term a “crime of passion”. Cantor succumbed to gunshot wounds in his chest and abdomen; his girlfriend, caught in the fraught triangle, was seen attempting to halt the escalation. The accused lived less than two miles from the scene, heightening a sense of tragic inevitability.

For the neighbourhood, normally buffered from headline-grabbing violence, the event was an unsparing reminder of the city’s stubborn undercurrent: domestic violence. College Point had registered four shootings so far this year—hardly a torrent, but significant in a precinct that experienced none in the comparable period a year before. Local reactions mixed shock with grim resignation; what seemed anomalous is, in truth, depressingly routine in the city’s crime landscape.

The ripples extend well beyond one block in Queens. According to the NYPD, New York City endures an average of 747 domestic-violence incidents a day, including assaults, abuse, and threats. Homicides related to intimate partners hover around 65 annually—paltry numbers in proportion to the city’s vastness, but each representing a household and a neighbourhood shaken. Recent weeks have seen the theme repeat: a 62-year-old man arrested for killing his wife (a nurse) in broad daylight, an elderly resident in the Bronx accused of murdering his spouse, and a string of similar tragedies across Long Island, Brooklyn, and New Jersey.

If statistics prompt alarm, the trajectory bodes little comfort. City leaders in recent years have lauded overall crime reductions, yet intimate partner violence remains an intractable outlier. The pandemic era, with its enforced isolations and economic stressors, appeared to supercharge these crimes: New York courts, shelter operators, and family service providers documented heightened caseloads throughout 2020 and beyond. Even as subway crime and street robberies recede, the private sphere—behind apartment doors and curtained windows—proves resistant to most policing and public policy efforts.

Economically, the toll is significant though often overlooked. The city’s social safety net groans under the cost of medical care, emergency housing, child protection, and lost productivity associated with domestic violence. The Center for Disease Control estimates the annual national expense exceeds $12 billion; New York, with its complex social fabric, must shoulder a disproportionate share. There is a knock-on effect too: children exposed to violence at home face reduced educational attainment and higher future risk of involvement in the criminal justice system.

The political context is, if anything, more vexing. Mayors and police commissioners have promised ever-bolder crackdown strategies, yet few sustainable solutions have emerged. Legal reforms intended to protect victims—restraining orders, mandatory arrest policies—can be patchy in execution. Undocumented immigrants, fearing deportation, often avoid authorities altogether, and language barriers further impede support. While City Hall has funneled tens of millions into public awareness, shelters, and “family justice centres”, measurable declines in violence remain elusive.

Nationally, New York’s struggle is not anomalous, but illustrative. Across the United States, domestic homicide rates have remained stubbornly constant even as other violent crimes have dipped. Cities like Los Angeles, Houston, and Chicago record similar spates of newsworthy, grisly incidents involving spouses, ex-partners, and family members. Notably, American rates of intimate-partner homicide—to our national discredit—remain roughly five times those of Western Europe or East Asia. Access to firearms is a well-documented accelerant: the Gun Violence Archive estimates over half of all intimate-partner homicides in America involve guns.

Globally, recent surveys by the World Health Organization suggest New York is no more immune to this “epidemic” than Johannesburg, London, or São Paulo. The pandemic did little to help. Lockdowns fueled a spike in calls—even as support systems faltered. Comparisons reveal that nations with coordinated legal, social, and economic interventions (think: Scandinavian countries) yield far lower rates and more robust outcomes for survivors. Their recipe of compulsory perpetrator programs, generous survivor support, and cross-agency data sharing rarely finds local equivalents in American big cities.

Unpacking the city’s private crisis

One lesson—the kind politicians rarely trumpet—is that domestic violence is neither fully preventable nor neatly tractable. Human frailty, jealousy, and rage seem to transcend policy and policing. Still, New York’s patchwork of fragmented interventions bodes poorly for addressing repeat offenders or reaching at-risk families before brutality emerges. Recent cases, like the Centeno-Cantor shooting, often unfold after red flags: earlier restraining orders, prior calls to police, family court interventions. The city’s “see something, say something” culture, more tuned to subway misdeeds than household tumult, offers little solace.

Yet not all is bleak. New York boasts what is arguably America’s most developed network of domestic violence services—shelters, counseling, legal aid, family court support. The city’s family-justice centres host over 100,000 client visits a year, with not-for-profits like Safe Horizon and Sanctuary for Families playing pivotal roles. Still, resources rarely meet demand. Waiting lists for safe housing stretch for weeks; culturally sensitive programming remains patchy; and legal remedies—such as orders of protection—prove a sieve against determined perpetrators.

We reckon such crimes, while sensational, mask an even broader “silence epidemic”—untold victims who will never make the news. The challenge for New York is not simply to police after the fact, but to build earlier warning systems and more expansive support. This will cost money—and political capital. Some will fret about privacy; others, about bureaucracy and inefficiency. Yet the persistence of “private” murders, as in College Point, portends a public failure.

In the final reckoning, the murder of Antonio Cantor is unlikely to alter the trajectory of New York’s approach to domestic violence on its own. But each such event punctures complacency, reminding the city that prosperity and safety can be more brittle—and private griefs far more common—than our aggregate statistics suggest. New York, for all its progress, still stumbles where policy and humanity collide. ■