Neighbors of a New York teenager accused of decapitating his mom’s boyfriend and leaving his head in the bathtub said the youngster looked “relieved” as he was taken away by police.
Damien Hurstel did not resist officers as he was taken, handcuffed and bloody, from his home in Staten Island Monday evening and was “very calm,” with a “blank” expression on his face, eyewitnesses told The Independent.
The 19-year-old is expected to be charged with murder and criminal possession of a weapon in the death of a 45-year-old man following the gruesome killing. The victim was found with multiple stab wounds to the neck and head – which had been removed with a hacksaw, police sources said.
Hurstel’s 16-year-old sister had discovered the decapitated body, the sources said.
Neighbors were still gathered in the street Tuesday afternoon, almost 24 hours after the incident, and recalled the chaotic scene as Hurstel’s mother screamed, cried and vomited in the street due to shock.
But as the teenager was led out of the house wearing a black hoodie, sweatpants and Timberland boots which were blood-stained, he did not resist at all.
“Honestly he looked like was free from whatever was happening,” Jennifer Diaz, who has lived on the street for three years, told The Independent at the scene. “He looked relieved. He was very calm … like he was there but he wasn’t there.”
She added that Hurstel, who had specks of blood on his face, was silent as he was led out and followed police officers’ instructions to get in the car before being sped away.
“He wasn’t all bloody … he wasn’t there. He was blank,” Carmen, another neighbour, told The Independent. “He was shocked I guess… no roughing with the police he was very calm. No reaction no nothing.”
The teenager reportedly has a history of mental illness and is believed to be schizophrenic, according to a property manager who spoke to local news outlets. Neighbors said the crime had seemed “personal.”
“There was some built up aggression,” Diaz said. “If you kill somebody you kill somebody, but to do that with the head that’s something more personal… But you never know what’s going on behind closed doors.”
The suspect allegedly told his sister that he “did something bad,” sources told The New York Post, and tried to prevent her from seeing the gory scene. The teenage girl reportedly called her mother, who arrived after first responders.
Neighbors recalled how the woman had been screaming and throwing up “like crazy” in the street.
“When EMT came here she told them ‘there’s no reason for going into the house, you can’t save him,’” Diaz said. “And when the cops came here she said her son was in the house and to please don’t hurt him.”
“They said it was like a horror house,” Carmen added. Neighboring houses adorned with Halloween decorations added to the eerie scene.
According to the property manager, the victim was a retired employee of New York’s Department of Sanitation, who was forced to go on disability due to severe vision loss, a friend of the victim told The Post.
The man, who has yet to be named, was often seen smoking a daily cigarette out on his porch. The family had largely kept to themselves, neighbors said.
“He used to sit in that chair by the window… I used to say hello to him and I said bye, not enough when I spoke to him or knew his name, but I saw him every day,” a third neighbor, who did not want to be named, told The Independent.
Neighbors said that the incident had left them shaken. “You don’t know who you have [nearby] sometimes,” Carmen Diaz told The Independent.
Two friends of the victim, Louis Ortiz and Donna Ortiz, said that the man had not deserved what had happened to him, and criticized the city mental health services for not doing more to help Hurstel.
“It’s crazy,” Louis said. “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.”
“This didn’t deserve to happen to him,” Donna added. “He was just about to retire and live his life as best as he could.”
