Prosecutors will seek the death penalty for the man accused of stabbing and running over his wife in a hospital parking lot in Coral Springs according to court documents filed Thursday.
The attack happened about 7:30 a.m. July 28 after Merin Joy had left her overnight shift at the hospital. Police said witnesses and surveillance video show her husband, Philip Mathew, attacking her. Police say he stabbed her 17 times before driving over her as he fled, and Joy was able to identify him just before she died. He has been charged with her murder and is in the Broward County jail with no bond.
Although the State Attorney’s Office cannot yet call a grand jury because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the documents show that if he is eventually indicted by a grand jury for first-degree murder, they will seek the death penalty. The letter, signed by State Attorney Michael Satz, said the murder was cold, calculated, premeditated and “atrocious, heinous or cruel.”
A cousin of Joy’s who lives in Florida said the crime was brutal enough to justify the death penalty and if this wasn’t enough reason for an execution, “I don’t know what is.”
He said the couple’s daughter is constantly in tears and her parents in disbelief.
“I don’t think they have accepted it,” he said of her parents. “I don’t think it’s hit them yet.”
Family and friends said Joy was leaving her last shift at the hospital because she had gotten a new job in Tampa. As she prepared to move to escape her abusive marriage, she left the couple’s 2-year-old daughter in their native India in December with her parents for safekeeping.
One of Mathew’s best friends, Joice John Madasseril, speaking from India on Thursday, said he was crushed to learn of the state’s intention.
“He lost his life already — now he can’t see his daughter anymore,” he said. “He already died.”
