8 JANUARY 3, 2019 RIDGEWOOD TIMES WWW.QNS.COM
Mom holds vigil in Woodhaven seeking justice for slain son
BY MARK HALLUM
MHALLUM@SCHNEPSMEDIA.COM
Two years after her son was
beaten and stabbed to death in
the basement apartment of a
Woodhaven home, Christina Bernal
is still searching for answers.
On Efrain Vargas’ birthday, Dec. 27,
2018, Bernal simply grieved for her son
with the people who knew and loved
him with a vigil in front of the house
he was found in days aft er his death.
He would have been 26 in 2018.
Vargas was found dead on Jan. 29,
2017, and those closest to him said he
was just beginning to straighten out
his life aft er getting involved with
drugs, his mother said.
“They didn’t resolve any problems by
killing my son and I’m not going to stop
until I get these people in jail,” Bernal
said between sobs, then spoke of her
son. “I would have given everything to
make you happy, because I know you
were not too happy in this world. That’s
all I want from God is to make you rest
in peace… knowing that we love you.”
Bernal denies that her son was
robbed because she found his money
in the room where he died and friends
claim it is misinformation that he was
a drug dealer.
Those at the vigil lit candles around
a shrine, released balloons and played
some of Vargas’ favorite songs on portable
Bluetooth speakers.
“Honestly, this was the last person
I would have expected this to happen
to. I mean, he could piss you off … but
Christina Bernal grieves for her slain son Efrain Vargas during a vigil in Woodhaven on Dec. 27.
he always managed to keep a smile on
everybody’s faces,” Stephen Llorente,
a life-long friend of Vargas, said. “He
came from a struggle. He didn’t have
a bed, he slept on a mattress. For him
to have something, that’s just what he
wanted. He wanted to be somebody…
We’d all hang out, I’d have a problem
with somebody and within like two
minutes he had me smiling.”
At an early point in the vigil, the
owner of the house that Vargas was
renting from came out and tried to
disperse the gathering claiming her
Photo: Mark Hallum/RIDGEWOOD TIMES
late tenant “was a drug dealer.”
But at around 9:30 p.m., the transformer
explosion at the Con Edison
facility in Astoria occurred and lit up
the sky varying shades of blue and red,
catching the attention of the Woodhaven
gathering.
Astoria arcing at Con Ed plant fi lled local skies with blue light
BY MARK HALLUM
AND ROBERT POZARYCKI
EDITORIAL@RIDGEWOODTIMES.COM
Residents across the Greater
Ridgewood area and the city
were not the only ones who got a
kick out of the transformer explosion
that happened at a Con Edison facility
in Astoria on Thursday night.
Governor Andrew Cuomo held a
press conference at the Astoria Generating
Station at 31-01 20th Ave. on
Dec. 28 regarding the explosion that
sparked the social media trend #AstoriaBorealis
and had people across the
city cracking jokes about aliens.
“There was speculation when people
saw the blue light as to what it might
be,” Cuomo said. “People from Queens
tend to be a little suspicious, there
was some rumors that it was an alien
invasion.”
As it happened, a massive piece of
electrical equipment — generating
138,000 volts of electricity — malfunctioned,
causing the freaky blue
light that illuminated the skies and
fl ickered lights across the borough at
about 9:15 p.m. on Dec. 27.
The NYPD tweeted that a transformer
exploded at the Astoria plant, and
that the fi re is under control. The Fire
Department later reported that there
were no injuries “and no fi re.”
City Councilman Costa Constantinides,
who represents the Astoria
area, tweeted that there were no
known injuries or outages in the area
resulting from what he stated was a
“generator explosion.”
Lucy Ablasy and her daughter live a
block away to the south and thought it
was a fi re at fi rst. She said they did not
hear an explosion.
“It looked like an alien was shining
in our window,” Ablasy said. “My son
lives in Flushing and even he saw it.”
Astoria resident Frazier Newton
lives close to the plant, and shot video
of the event.
“I heard the bang, the lights fl ickered
and whatever, and then I came
out to see it,” he told QNS. “You could
see the light was blinding. When I
was taking the video, I was covering
my eyes, it was that bright. I could
feel the heat.”
Newton said that he didn’t hear an
explosion, but rather a “weird humming
or buzzing.”
In a statement released on Dec. 28,
Con Edison said that “the affected
equipment was isolated to a single
section within the substation” and that
the power company had “restored all
major transmission lines associated
with this event and is in the process
of investigating the root cause of the
failure.”
Screenshot of video courtesy of Frazier Newton
The bright blue light that emanated from a blast at the Con Edison plant
in Astoria on Dec. 27.
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