The father-to-be stabbed to death in Catonsville over Mother’s Day weekend just before his wife gave birth got an embrace and comforting words in his last moments from U.S. Rep. Elijah Cummings.
Cummings arrived at Carroll Fuel gas station in the 5200 block of Baltimore National Pike Saturday moments after Carlos Santay-Carrillo, 19, was stabbed. On Tuesday, the congressman recalled the horror:
“I held his head up, just so it wouldn’t be on the pavement. It didn’t seem real.”
The attack came as Santay-Carrillo rushed to buy gas at 6 p.m., Baltimore County police said, so he could get hispregnant wife to the hospital to give birth to the couple’s first child.
In front of several customers pumping gas, the robber grabbed Santay-Carrillo around the chest and demanded money, police said. Santay-Carrillo pulled away, police said, but the suspect stabbed him multiple times.
“As I was driving up to get my gas, there were three or four well-dressed African-American ladies on cell phones and they were crying,” Cummings said. “I looked to my right and I saw a man with blood spewing out. I thought he had been shot.
“It couldn’t have been more than 20 seconds before I got there. He was lying there by himself. He stood up, and the blood kept coming. He fell on his face. He turned over a little bit. I just started talking to him. I said, ‘It’s going to be all right. It’s going to be OK.'”
Now, Santay-Carrillo’s wife, Claudia Sales, 23, mourns her husband’s death even as she welcomes new life, her son, Carlos David.
Sales’ friends had a news conference Monday to ask for help finding Santay-Carrillo’s killer. Witnesses described the suspect as a black male in his mid-20s, between 5-foot-6 and 5-foot-9, weighing 140 to 160 pounds, with short black hair. He was wearing blue jeans and black athletic shoes.
Police say they’re investigating possible connections to other robberies near the station where Santay-Carrillo was stabbed.
“The thing that got me, he kept trying to get up,” Cummings said. “He was trying very hard. He must have rose up at least four or five times. He fought. He didn’t have much strength, but he fought.
“His heart had been punctured. For him to live for 30 minutes, that means he had a real drive to stay alive.”
Maybe he held on as long as he did, Cummings suggested, because he yearned so much to see his wife give birth and to hold his new baby.
