NEW YORK CITY — The allegedly jilted boyfriend who police said shot and killed his former lover and her new beau at a Bronx motel last week committed suicide Tuesday after a standoff with cops in Miami, police sources said.
Joseph Kernizan, 42, refused to surrender when police cornered him in an apartment complex late Tuesday, sources said.
Kernizan, who police said stalked his ex-girlfriend and her new lover before gunning them down at a Bronx motel early Saturday, made a break for it, but saw cops and retreated back into the apartment he had been staying in with a friend, source said.
Authorities evacuated residents from the apartment complex where Kernizan was holed up. His friend, too, dashed out of the apartment and turned himself in to cops, sources said.
In a desperate last ditch effort, Kernizan fired several shots at NYPD detectives, U.S. marshals and Miami cops, they added.
After one of the shots, authorities sent a robot equipped with a video camera in the apartment to scan the place, police sources said.
Kernizan was on the run after allegedly killing Tracy Bennett, 32, and her new lover, Wayne Hamilton, 50, a well known reggae artist who went by the name “Captain Barkey.”
The three had long been entangled in a bitter dispute that involved a restraining order and a taunting reggae song. The bad blood boiled over early Saturday outside the Holiday Motel in Eastchester, when Kernizan allegedly ambushed the couple and shot them to death.
