Ecuadorian National Pleads Guilty To Brutal Stabbing Death Of Popular Bergen County Chef

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Ray Edwardo Arcentales Sanchez, 24, could still get a minimum sentence of 10 years in state prison for the plea, entered in Superior Court in Hackensack earlier this week.

Then there’s the matter of his citizenship.

Police at the time said the Ecuadorian national was sitting on a curb, spattered with blood, when officers responding to a 911 call found a mortally wounded Yuryin Herrera, 36, on the backyard steps of his Abend Street home on Oct. 28, 2021.

An 8-inch blood-covered kitchen knife that had belonged to the chef was recovered from a nearby garbage can, investigative sources told Daily Voice at the time.

Herrera was taken to Hackensack University Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead.

Sanchez and Herrera both had apparently been drinking with friends and co-workers when they got into an argument.

Sanchez claimed Herrera slapped him in the face and insulted him, so he grabbed the knife and a broken bottle. He then stabbed the victim repeatedly, prosecutors said.

Herrera, an avid cyclist and native of Bogotá, Colombia, worked the kitchen at several notable restaurants, including Carmine’s Italian Restaurant near Times Square, Sofia Englewood on Engle Street in Englewood and The Hill in Manhattan.

He'd married a pediatric critical care nurse just two years before his death.

Authorities charged Sanchez with murder and weapons possession.

ICE, meanwhile, issued a detainer requesting 48-hour notice in the event that Sanchez was somehow released.

Superior Court Judge Frances McGrogan accepted Sanchez’s guilty plea to aggravated manslaughter in Hackensack on Wednesday.

She ordered the former cleaning service employee’s return to the Bergen County Jail pending sentencing on April 28.

Questions over Sanchez’s immigration status remain to be resolved. It was unclear whether the government would seek to deport him soon or wait until he’d served out his sentence.

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