Waldo Mejia: Bus Stop Killing, Insanity Defense, and Commitment Debate

Waldo Mejia is a 29-year-old Bronx man charged with the January 2025 fatal stabbing of 14-year-old Caleb Rijos at a Mott Haven bus stop and with a separate subway stabbing five days earlier. After roughly seven months at a state psychiatric facility, he was restored to competency and indicted in May 2026 on charges including second-degree murder and attempted murder. His attorney says he will pursue a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity.

The Bus Stop Killing of Caleb Rijos

Around 10:00 a.m. on January 10, 2025, Rijos was standing alone near Lincoln Avenue and 138th Street waiting for a bus to school. Surveillance footage showed him looking the other way when Mejia walked up and stabbed him multiple times in the chest, piercing his heart and lungs.¹

Rijos managed to call his father. Bronx District Attorney Darcel D. Clark said the teenager told his father “that he couldn’t breathe and that he was scared,” and his father heard him dying.² He collapsed between two parked cars. A bystander flagged down an ambulance, and Rijos was pronounced dead at NYC Health + Hospitals Lincoln.¹

Police arrested Mejia the same day. At his court appearance he shouted that he was “with Satan.”³

The Subway Stabbing Five Days Earlier

Prosecutors say Mejia attacked another stranger less than a week before the killing. Around 3:50 a.m. on January 5, 2025, he allegedly followed a 38-year-old man into the stairwell of the No. 6 train station at 138th Street and Alexander Avenue and stabbed him in the arm, severing the brachial artery and entering the chest.¹ The man was admitted to intensive care and underwent multiple surgeries.⁴

Prior Arrests and Untreated Schizophrenia

NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch called Mejia a “violent recidivist” with a history of mental health interactions with the department.⁵ His arrest record dated back a decade:

2015, carrying a knife.
2017, possession of a loaded gun.
2019, burglary and arson after surveillance video showed him pouring gasoline in the lobby of a Kingsbridge co-op and setting it on fire.⁶
November 27, 2024, stabbing a neighbor’s Ring camera with a kitchen knife. He was released on his own recognizance the next day.⁷

His family said he had been diagnosed with schizophrenia.⁸ Childhood friend Mozart Beato told the New York Times that Mejia began hearing voices in his early 20s, and that the voices would order him to do things, including once directing him to take a Greyhound bus to Mississippi on what Mejia called a “side mission.” Medication could quiet the voices for stretches, Beato said, but they never fully went away.³

In the months before the attacks, Mejia had stopped taking his medication, according to his family. Relatives said they asked his mental health provider to have him involuntarily committed and were told it was not possible. His stepbrother, Giomi Mejia, described repeated calls seeking treatment and a language barrier his mother encountered in the process. A case manager told the family, “We can’t commit him against his will.”⁹

Found Unfit for Trial, Then Restored

On March 20, 2025, Bronx Supreme Court Justice George Villegas ruled Mejia mentally unfit to stand trial and ordered him remanded to a psychiatric facility.¹⁰ He spent approximately seven months at the Kirby Forensic Psychiatric Center.⁸

Under New York Criminal Procedure Law Article 730, a defendant is incapacitated if, because of mental disease or defect, they cannot understand the proceedings or assist in their own defense. Treatment aims to restore that capacity so the case can move forward.

On October 10, 2025, a judge deemed Mejia restored to fitness, and he was transferred to Rikers Island.¹ His attorney, Patrick Brackley, said he would not contest the finding, describing Mejia as “lucid and he’s assisting me in his defense at this point.”⁸

The Indictment and Current Charges

On May 20, 2026, Mejia was arraigned before Bronx Supreme Court Justice Timothy Lewis on a grand jury indictment covering both attacks. The counts are:

Second-degree murder
First-degree manslaughter
Attempted murder in the second degree
First-degree assault
Two counts of second-degree assault
Two counts of fourth-degree criminal possession of a weapon

The murder and manslaughter counts concern Rijos; the attempted murder and assault counts stem from the subway stabbing. Clark said Mejia “allegedly committed two random, horrific acts of violence” and that “Caleb’s death shocked and saddened the city.”¹ Mejia was remanded without bail and is scheduled to return to court on August 18, 2026.

The Planned Insanity Defense

Brackley has said he intends to enter a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity: “I am still going to challenge his mental capacity at the time of the crime.”⁸

Under New York Penal Law § 40.15, insanity is an affirmative defense. The defendant must prove by a preponderance of the evidence that, at the time of the crime, a mental disease or defect left them without the substantial capacity to know or appreciate either the nature and consequences of their conduct or that the conduct was wrong. If the defense succeeds, the defendant is sent to a secure psychiatric facility rather than prison.⁸

Fitness and insanity are separate questions. Fitness asks whether a defendant can understand and participate in current proceedings. The insanity defense asks about the defendant’s mental state when the crime happened. A defendant can be fit to stand trial today and still argue he was not legally responsible on the day of the offense.

The Involuntary Commitment Debate the Case Fueled

The family’s failed attempts to get Mejia committed became a flashpoint in Albany. During the 2025 state budget, Governor Kathy Hochul, backed by Mayor Eric Adams, proposed loosening involuntary treatment standards to cover people whose mental illness prevents them from meeting basic needs, allow psychiatric nurse practitioners to commit patients, and streamline parts of Kendra’s Law.¹¹

The Legislature rejected the proposal. State Senator Samra Brouk, chair of the Senate Mental Health Committee, said she would “continue to oppose efforts to put people into forced treatment or forced detention” because “coerced treatment does not work.”¹² Mental health attorney Douglas Stern said current law requires signs of danger to self or others before treatment can be compelled: “There is no mechanism for treatment in the community that’s mandatory.”⁹ Clark, announcing the indictment, said the state “must do more to address underlying mental health issues and get services to people before they can harm others.”¹

1
Bronx District Attorney’s Office. Waldo Mejia Indicted for Murder
2
Miami Herald. Caleb Rijos Stabbing
3
New York Times. Waldo Mejia Caleb Rijos Stabbing Voices
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News 12 Bronx. Bronx Man Indicted for Murder of Teen Waiting for School Bus
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CBS News New York. Caleb Rijos Murder Bronx Stabbing Arrest
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ABC 7 New York. Police Make Arrest After Bronx Building Lobby Set on Fire
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ABC News. Man Charged in Fatal Stabbing of 14-Year-Old in Bronx
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Gothamist. Bronx Man Accused in Teen’s Bus Stop Killing Plans Insanity Defense
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Gothamist. Bronx Man Accused of Stabbing Teen to Death Refused Treatment Despite Pleas, Family Says
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Bronx District Attorney’s Office. Bronx DA Statement on Waldo Mejia Found Unfit
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New York Post. New York’s Broken Mental Health Laws
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New York Post. A 14-Year-Old Is Dead and Democrats in Albany Are to Blame