Police said they shot and killed a 20-year-old Queens man Thursday after he stabbed his 8-year-old stepbrother to death and left his father and stepmother injured with multiple stab wounds.
According to NYPD Chief of Patrol John Chell, police were called to an apartment building on 94th Avenue near Sutphin Boulevard in Jamaica around 5:20 p.m. The 29-year-old stepmother ran out of the building bleeding from multiple stab wounds in her back and shoulders, pleading for help.
The building’s security desk called 911, Chell said. Officers arrived at the small apartment to find a 20-year-old man holding his 43-year-old father in a headlock over the kitchen sink with a knife to his throat, he said. The father had multiple stab wounds in his head and across his body, police said.
“They give at least four commands, both in English and Spanish to drop the knife. He does not,” Chell told reporters during a press conference at the scene. “They have to use their weapons to save this man’s life, and that’s what they did.”
Chell said the officers fired one round, hitting the man in the torso and preventing him from continuing the assault. He was taken to Jamaica Hospital in stable condition, and later died from his injuries, police said Friday morning. His stepmother was also taken to the same hospital, where she is still being treated.
At some point during the incident, Chell said officers found the 8-year-old boy stabbed multiple times in the apartment. He was the suspect’s stepbrother, and the son of the woman who was stabbed, police said. An 8-month-old baby girl was also found in the apartment, unharmed.
Police said it was unclear whether they all lived together in the apartment.
“They were a happy family,” said neighbor Vanessa Rivera, 37. “You should’ve seen them smiling, laughing, always cooking.”
The 8-year-old boy attended Rivera’s son’s birthday party last year on the building’s roof, she said. She said she had invited him again this year to her son’s third birthday party in two weeks at a waterpark.
“He was so jolly,” she said of the deceased boy. “He loved his mother.”
