MANHATTAN SUPREME COURT — A teenage Fordham University student was indicted Monday for allegedly beating his mother — LaGuardia HS teacher Karyn Kay — to death at their Hell's Kitchen apartment after suffering a seizure.
It's not clear what charges Henry Wachtel, 19, was indicted for in connection to the alleged attack at their West 55th Street apartment, which stunned LaGuardia community and left current and former students and colleagues reeling.
He was initially charged by police with murder and has been held without bail at Rikers Island since last Wednesday afternoon.
But Wachtel's lawyer, Lloyd Epstein, said told reporters that the teen didn't mean to kill his mother, who was also a filmmaker and Pratt Institute instructor.
"Everyone knows that Henry didn't intend to kill his mother," Epstein said before the indictment was announced.
Epstein argued that his client flew into a rage brought on by medications he took to control his epileptic seizures.
Speaking from jail, Wachtel told the Daily News he was having a seizure at the time of the attack, and doesn't remember anything.
According to prosecutors, Kay called 911 for help when her son began seizing, only to cry out to the operator in horror when he allegedly attacked her.
A voice believed to be Wachtel's can be heard on a 911 recording crying, "Mommy, Mommy, please don't die," moments before police arrived to find Kay, 63, lying lifeless in a pool of blood in her Midtown apartment.
Wachtel is expected to return to court on May 10.
