Guest charged in strangling death of his Heights host

Tuesday, May 19, 2009
By MICHAELANGELO CONTE
JOURNAL STAFF WRITER

A Jersey City man was charged in a Heights homicide yesterday after an autopsy revealed that a man found dead in an apartment he was in on Sunday had been strangled, officials said.

Leonardo Novoa, 35, of Central Avenue near Thorne Street, was already in police custody when a warrant for his arrest on the murder charge was signed yesterday, Hudson County Prosecutor Edward DeFazio said.

He is charged with killing Darrell Simmons, 43, in Simmons' home on Sherman Avenue near Franklin Street early Sunday morning, DeFazio said.

Police responded to Simmons' building at about 3 a.m. Sunday after getting reports of arguing and screaming coming from his apartment, DeFazio said.

Novoa, apparently a guest at the home, answered the door and spoke to the officers briefly before they entered and found Simmons dead, DeFazio said.

The death was originally listed as suspicious and investigators thought drugs may have played a role, DeFazio said, noting police arrested Novoa on the charge of failing to render aid to the victim.

During the postmortem performed at the state Regional Medical Examiner's Office in Newark yesterday morning it was determined that Simmons' hyoid bone, located in the Adam's apple, was fractured, DeFazio said. Medical examiners ruled the cause of death to be manual strangulation leading to asphyxiation, DeFazio said.

Novoa is being held at the Hudson County jail in Kearny and was to make his first appearance on the original charge yesterday but the appearance was postponed, DeFazio said.

The motive for the alleged homicide remains unclear, he said.

The defendant was in prison from Sept. 8, 2006 to March 27, 2007 and Sept. 12, 2007 to Sept. 3, 2008 on two convictions for burglary, state corrections officials said.