45-year-old sanitation worker decapitated by girlfriend’s teenage son in NYC home: cops, sources
A New York City sanitation worker who was nearing retirement was allegedly decapitated by his girlfriend’s troubled teenage son inside a Staten Island home Monday, according to cops and sources.
Police responded to a shocking 911 call of a man stabbed — and reportedly decapitated — inside a Cary Avenue home in West Brighton just after 4:20 p.m. and discovered the 45-year-old victim with multiple stab wounds to his head and neck, according to the NYPD.
The victim — whose head was chopped off his body, according to sources — was pronounced dead at the scene, cops said.
The 19-year-old son of the victim’s girlfriend was arrested at the scene, but has not yet been charged, according to sources and friends.
The butchered man was a DSNY worker who was forced to go on disability due to severe vision loss, a close friend told The Post outside the taped-off home.
The teen — who has a long history of mental health issues — allegedly told his younger sister that he “did something bad” when she came home from school, sources said.
The sister then walked into the home through multiple blood trails and found the 45-year-old decapitated in the bathroom tub with a knife still in his neck, sources added.
The incident was domestic in nature, and the family has a history of domestic incident reports, according to sources.
Police officers were still swarming the property on Monday night as a handful of neighbors gathered across the street.
Longtime close friends of the victim, Louis Ortiz, 47, andDonna Ortiz, 46, rushed to the home after seeing the news of the sanitation worker’s killing on TV.
“It’s a crime scene. It’s crazy.I can’t even believe I was looking at my friend’s house on the TV screen. And I had to get up and run over here because I didn’t want to believe that it was true until I saw it with my eyes,” Louis told The Post.
“This didn’t deserve to happen to him. He was just about to retire and live his life as best as he could,” Donna said of their slain friend.
Louis had seen the victim, who has not been publicly identified, just days before to help him buy a truck for his girlfriend due to his increasing vision loss — which he said “absolutely” made him a more vulnerable victim.
“This is tough. I just lost a friend … He was easygoing, man. He was a good person. He did anything for anybody. He’d take his shirt off his back and give it to you if you needed it.”
He also described the Staten Island man as “the nicest guy in the world” and who loved fishing.
The couple had been together nearly six years and “always had their ups and downs with the kids,” he added.
Louis claimed the teenage person of interest was always “sweet as pie” and frequently played video games with Donna’s stepson despite having known mental health issues.
“The boy was always going through stuff in school. Mental health issues. The city got to do more with mental health,” he said.
His wife, Donna, a medical worker who used to work at a psych center, echoed the call-out on mental health issues and said the signs were there.
“He’d be alive right now if the city dealt with mental health,” she said of their friend.
Neighbor Mariano Castro, 36, told The Post he never noticed anything amiss between the victim and the girlfriend’s son, noting he recently saw the two in their backyard mowing the lawn and grilling on the barbecue.
“I never saw them fighting each other, so that’s completely crazy. That’s all I can say,” the shaken construction worker said.
The incident remains under investigation.
Additional reporting by Larry Celona
