Keansburg Man Strangled Girlfriend, Left Her Body At Hospital, Prosecutor Says

TOMS RIVER, NJ — A Keansburg man is accused of strangling his girlfriend at a Seaside Heights motel, and then leaving her unresponsive body at a hospital, where she died two days later, the Ocean County Prosecutor's Office said Friday.

Emiliano Davila, 41, of Keansburg, is charged with murder in the death of Mary O’Connor, 32, of Seaside Heights, said Ocean County Prosecutor Bradley Billhimer.

Two men dropped O'Connor off at Community Medical Center Monday, prosecutor's office said. Both men then left.

O'Connor was unresponsive, authorities said, and was found to be suffering from a brain bleed and "showed obvious signs of bruising consistent with strangulation."

Investigators determined Davila, who was dating O'Connor, was one of the two men who had left her at the hospital, authorities said. The investigation found Davila had assaulted O'Connor the night before at the Seaside Heights motel where she was living, prosecutors said.

Davila was arrested later on Nov. 3 by detectives from the Ocean County Prosecutor’s Office Narcotics Strike Force and Brick Township police and taken to the Ocean County Jail. He initially was charged with domestic violence aggravated assault by way of strangulation, the prosecutor's office said.

O'Connor died from her injuries on Wednesday, and an autopsy by the Ocean County Medical Examiner's Office on Thursday determined the cause of her death was blunt force trauma to the head that caused a subdural hematoma, and the manner of death was homicide, prosecutors said.

While he was in the Ocean County Jail, Davila was then charged with murder.