CLAREMONT — A 22-year-old was stabbed to death in a McDonald's parking lot early Sunday morning, police said.
The victim, Hansell Arias, 22, of The Bronx, was college-bound, and had been looking forward to a career as a restaurateur, family members said.
He was killed at 2:13 a.m. Sunday, when police found him unconscious on Webster Avenue near East 173rd St., with a stab wound in his chest, police said.
He was rushed to Lincoln Hospital but declared dead upon arrival, police said.
Lisa Arias, 36, the victim's sister, said her brother was a loving young man, who lived with his mother at their Unionport home. Police told the family that her brother likely didn't know the person who stabbed him, she said.
''He was very happy, motivated. He loved dancing to all types of music," said Arias, who said her mother, while at home, was too overcome with grief to speak.
"He didn't drink. He didn't smoke. He was clean. He always honored his parents," and he was a devout Catholic and read the Bible frequently, she said.
He had also recently bought a Honda Accord. "That was his baby," she said.
Arias worked at a pizza restaurant called Little Italy, near Penn Station, and had worked his shift on Saturday, come home to shower around 11 p.m., she said, and filled out some college forms for his upcoming semester at Bronx Community College where he was going to study business.
''He wanted to open a restaurant," said Arias. "He told me he wanted his name to be known.''
Then he made plans to meet up with his fiancée , Erica, she said.
"He was crazy about his fiancée ," said his sister-in-law, Courtney B., who did not want her last name to be used.
On the way to see her, he stopped at McDonald's, where friends of his work, said Arias.
Then, she said, Erica received a call from a friend, saying that Hansell had been stabbed.
At the hospital before her brother died, Arias said a doctor told the family he had lost too much blood, and though a blood transfusion got her brother's heart beating again, "he was unconscious and his brain was dead.''
Police said there have been no suspects found related to the incident, and that an investigation was ongoing.
Lisa Arias pleaded for her brother's killer to confess and turn themselves in.
''Come forward for what you did, and have it on your conscience that God will have revenge for this. God will punish the person that did this.''
