By Gabriela Resto-Montero
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
A 9-year-old boy was stabbed to death by a mentally ill man in Morningside Heights early Sunday morning after being left in his care to play video games, police and family said.
Alejandro Morales, 25, was charged with the murder of Anthony Maldonado and was evaluated at Bellevue Hospital before his arraignment, police said.
The child, who had been staying with family at the Grant Houses, on La Salle Street, was left with Morales when his uncle went to get food at a nearby restaurant.
Police, responding to a 911 call, discovered Anthony about 3:30 a.m. with a stab wound to the chest. The child was stabbed several times and had slashes across his face, the New York Times reported.
He was pronounced dead at St. Luke's Hospital shortly after four a.m., according to police.
Morales claimed that the pair were playing a Tony Hawk skating game when Anthony provoked him, according to the Times.
Morales suffered from schizophrenia and had been heavily medicated for the past ten years, his mother, Antonia Morales told the Times.
He'd lived in a Brooklyn halfway house until Christmas Eve following an August incident where he punched a man on the street, the paper reported.
Before the punching altercation, Morales served time in prison for hitting a subway passenger on the head with a bottle, the Daily News reported.
The funeral for Anthony will be held on Tuesday in New Jersey.
