NEW YORK — A troubled teenager lopped off the head of his mother’s boyfriend in a bloody knife attack inside the bathroom of their Staten Island home Monday afternoon, police said.
“I did something bad,” the 19-year-old suspect told his 16-year-old sister after she came home from school to the bloody scene about 4:20 p.m. Monday, according to police sources. “Go to your room.”
The sister called their mother, who raced home and called 911.
The mother “just kept saying to her son, ‘Why would you kill him? I still loved him!’” said neighbor Jennifer Diaz, who witnessed the aftermath to the slaying.
On Tuesday, cops charged the son, Damien Hurstel, with murder. After being charged, cops walked him out of the 120th Precinct stationhouse in handcuffs into an ambulance after he suffered some sort of medical episode, police sources said. His face and white Tyvek jumpsuit were smeared with blood and his wrists and ankles were handcuffed as he was loaded onto a stretcher.
He was taken to a hospital in advance of his arraignment in Staten Island Criminal Court.
When the suspect’s sister arrived home from school she found her brother covered in blood and trails of blood throughout the home on Cary Avenue near North Burgher Avenue in West Brighton, police sources said.
The sister found her mother’s 45-year-old boyfriend stabbed multiple times in the head and neck in the bathtub. The man’s head had been severed and a knife was still sticking out of his neck, the sources said. His name was not immediately released.
The suspect’s sister ran outside and called their 39-year-old mother.
“I just finished cooking when I heard the mom screaming, ‘He’s dead! He’s dead!’” said Diaz. “I heard sirens so I came out … (The mother) was out here, hysterically crying. She was throwing up. Then I heard her tell the EMS that ‘The head is in the tub, you don’t need to go in.’”
“They (EMS) were waiting for the police to come here before they went in the house,” Diaz added.
Cops soon arrived.
“She said ‘Please don’t hurt my son — he’s still in the house,’” Diaz said. “Then she said that he had special needs.”
“She was standing over there (in the driveway) throwing up,” she added. “One of the neighbors came out and brought her over water. But the cops wouldn’t let us go near her. We wanted to calm her down because she had nobody with her.”
Hurstel surrendered with his hands raised in the air, police sources said.
“He was very calm, cooperative,” Diaz said. “The kid looked like he was aware of his surroundings but he did not look like he was there … I feel like the kid looked relieved.”
“It was a blank expression. No expression at all. None,” she added. “He didn’t say anything. Nothing at all. He didn’t give the police a hard time, walked right with them, got in the (police) car.”
Hurstel was on various medications and was emotionally disturbed, police sources said.
The suspect’s mother had called cops five times on her boyfriend starting in 2021, police source said. In the first incident, she said her boyfriend had been drinking, had a gun on him and was breaking things in the home. Cops responded but found no gun.
In August 2023, she called cops complaining her boyfriend was drinking and cops told him to leave the home. He came back an hour later and allegedly slapped Hurstel and tried to attack Hurstel’s mother, leading cops to be called again, according to the sources. It’s wasn’t clear if that call resulted in an arrest.
“They must’ve had a lot of problems going on,” said a 25-year-old neighbor who gave his name only as Justin. “The house is quiet. I never seen no incidents going on with them.”
He was shocked that the stabbing ended with his neighbor decapitated.
“Anything like that makes me feel like it’s devilish, it’s just evil,” she said. “Doing that just shows you have a devil inside of you or something. That’s too much. I understand things happen, people let emotions get the best of them — but that’s too much.”
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