NYC man chopped up and dumped in river was killed while on phone and caller heard the whole thing: nephew

The Manhattan man whose dismembered torso was found stuffed in a suitcase bobbing around the East River was on the phone when his killer pounced — and the caller heard the fatal struggle, his nephew claimed.Edwin Echevarria told neighbors his alleged live-in killer was his grandson — and claimed he took him in because he felt sorry for him, according to his nephew Eric Maldonado.“He was talking to his friend on the phone and his friend heard the argument — [then] he heard some loud banging, then grunting and moaning,” Eric Maldonado said of the fight that allegedly ended with Christian Millet, 23, knocking 65-year-old Edwin Echevarria to the ground, stomping his head and stabbing him 14 times with a makeshift ice pick.Edwin Echevarria’s friend called the cops, who did several welfare checks that day before finally getting inside the fifth-floor, Columbia Street apartment in which the pair lived, his nephew said.“He was the son of my uncle’s on-again, off-again girlfriend,” Eric Maldonado, 46, told The Post.“My uncle felt sorry for him.

He said he saw the kid grow up and that he had problems with his mother and she threw him out.”That bond made the elder Echevarria’s death even harder to stomach.“He was killed by someone he trusted,” Eric Maldonado said.“My brother kept telling him, get him out! Get him out! My brother tried to get him out.

But my uncle said he felt bad for the kid and he kept defending him.”Millet has been charged with second-degree murder for the killing, which law enforcement sources said he committed after he and his roomate argued over food in their shared residence at the NYCHA’s Baruch Houses on the Lower East Side.After the savage attack, Millet allegedly dragged the corpse to the bathtub and chopped it up with a kitchen knife, sources said.Authorities began investigating the case after a passing boat spotted a suitcase floating in the river at about 5:30 p.m.on Feb.

5.Someone on the craft called the cops,...