Ann to Appear in Criminal Court Monday, Victim's Heart was in Her Art

With an outstretched arm, Aena Hong dipped her fine-point brush into the paint as the children gathered around her in anxious anticipation of where she would place her next colorful stroke. She was putting the final dazzling touches on Tinkerbell, bringing to life one of the most beloved children's stories.

Hong's life ended abruptly Monday in a brutal hit-and-run attack outside the , allegedly by her boyfriend, Charles J. Ann.

Ann, who was extradited to New Jersey Friday morning and transported to the Bergen County Jail after a stop at the for fingerprinting and photographing, according to The Record, is scheduled to appear before Presiding Criminal Division Judge Liliana DeAvila-Silebi Monday morning in Hackensack, where he will be arraigned on murder charges, officials told Patch.

But Hong's art will live on in her memory on the walls of the children's room at the Palisades Park Public Library to fascinate and inspire generations of children to come.

"She was such a talented artist," said Steven Cavallo, coordinator of programming for the library, and an established artist.

"I never considered her a student," Cavallo told Patch Friday. "I considered her my peer; that's how highly I regarded her talent."

Hong had been in the U.S. for about two-and-a-half years on a student visa to attend a language school in Fort Lee, officials with the Bergen County Prosecutor's Office told Patch this week.

She had hopes of attending art school in New York City, and Cavallo had also taught her English at the library in Palisades Park, according to The Record.

Ann Piccirillo—now a local editor with Patch in New Milford—met Hong in the summer of 2010 while working on a story about the murals she, and other talented young people, were painting under Cavallo's direction. 

"I like making the children smile," Hong told Piccirillo, when asked what she liked best about painting the mural. "I like to know that my work will always be here. It will always make children smile."

And while the other muralists took breaks to laugh, talk and eat a snack, Hong stayed focused on finishing her creation. From time-to-time, she would take measured steps back from the wall to observe her work with a critical eye. At one point, frowning slightly, she walked up to the wall, and with three or four strokes, she made right what had seemed, in her eyes, to be wrong.

"I don't want her to be remembered as the victim of this tragedy," Cavallo told Patch. "She was so much more than that; deserves more than that."

After pausing, Cavallo added, "I want her to be remembered for the talented artist that she was."