A Mount Vernon man accused of smashing his way into his ex-girlfriend’s home and slashing her in a jealous rage as she was with another man was convicted in Westchester County Court.
Ajany Waite faces between five and 25 years in prison for first-degree assault and first-degree burglary after jurors on Wednesday, June 17, found him guilty on eight of the nine charges he faced.
The 44-year-old woman testified last week of a contentious two-year relationship with Waite that culminated in the violence at her East Grand Street home in the pre-dawn hours of June 6, 2025.
She had forced him to move out three months earlier after a second trip to the emergency room from him punching her. But she acknowledged they were still intimate for about a month after that.
By June she had begun a casual relationship with another man. Early on June 6 she was with him and friends at a Bronx club and Waite was there with another woman. She and Waite texted back and forth , her asking him to get her marijuana, him asking for a drink, but she insisted she didn’t want to be face to face with him.
She claimed that she and the new boyfriend were naked in her room when Waite busted the locks on the apartment door and came in.
She said he chased the other man and grabbed her neck so hard before she ran into a room to hide. She said he pushed his way into the room as she tried to hold the door closed. He swung at her from behind the door and she felt a sharp pain on her face and realized she was bleeding. Another swing left her with a bloody gash on her shoulder.
She had suffered a deep gash from her eyelid to her hairline and a broken facial bone under her eye. Waite fled but was arrested two days later.
In closing arguments Monday, defense lawyer Nicole Zagreda acknowledged the woman suffered a “horrifying” injury. But she told jurors that the case was “a black hole of missing information”, with the account of the new boyfriend and another woman who was in the apartment that morning never provided to the jury.
She suggested it was the other woman who had let Waite into the house, making his entry not a burglary, and that there was reasonable doubt about whether he wielded the knife in the house that morning or intended to hurt the woman.
Zagreda urged jurors to only convict Waite of fourth-degree criminal possession of a weapon, a misdemeanor, for slashing two of the tires on the man’s car, which was clearly seen on a neighbor’s video as Waite was leaving the house.
But Assistant District Attorney Joyce Miller contended that Waite was guilty of far more than that, that it was a “very real and brutal” case of domestic violence the physical and emotional scars of which the woman continues to carry around.
“All because he was insulted, he was offended, he was rejected,” Miller said. “That’s what this case is all about: rage that translated into intentional and deliberate acts.”
The woman claimed that before the slashing Waite grabbed her so hard by the neck that she thought she was going to pass out. But that related to the one charge for which Waite was found not guilty, second-degree strangulation.
In addition to four counts of the top assault and burglary charges, Waite was convicted of three counts of second-degree assault and the misdemeanor weapon charge.
The verdict was reached after two full days of deliberations following the two-week trial. Waite, 33, was returned to the county jail to await sentencing, which Westchester Judge Anne Bianchi scheduled for July 22.
This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: Guilty verdict in Mount Vernon domestic violence slashing
Reporting by Jonathan Bandler, Rockland/Westchester Journal News / Rockland/Westchester Journal News
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By Jonathan Bandler, Rockland/Westchester Journal News | USA TODAY Network
