BROOKLYN — The mentally ill man accused of stabbing a 6-year-old boy to death and slashing a 7-year-old girl in a public housing elevator earlier this month interrupted a court proceeding Wednesday afternoon before being shot down by the judge, according to reports.
"Your honor, is it all right if I have a moment with the court? A short moment," Daniel St. Hubert, 27, told a judge Wednesday after being indicted for murder in connection to the attacks, according to the New York Post.
"No. Remand continued," Judge Matthew Sciarrino snapped back.
The boy's father, Nicholas Avitto, 56, watched the scene from the audience.
“I actually saw him personally for the first time today,” the dad, who had "PJ" shaved into the back of his head, told the Daily News. “I guess he wanted to play a crazy, mental role."
St. Hubert, 27, who is being held without bail in Bellevue Medical Center's psychiatric prison ward, is accused of fatally stabbing Prince Joshua "P.J." Avitto, 6, and critically wounding his friend Mikayla Capers, 7, in the Boulevard Houses on June 1, just days after he was released from spending 5 years in prison for choking his mother unconscious.
Avitto and Capers were riding in an elevator in the Boulevard Houses in East New York on their way to get ice cream when St. Hubert told them to "shut up" and began stabbing them, police said.
"These two innocent children were subjected to unimaginable violence and terror in that elevator. We will now hold Daniel St. Hubert responsible for his cowardly, unmerciful and inhumane acts against Prince Joshua Avitto and Mikayla Capers," said Brooklyn District Attorney Kenneth Thompson.
St. Hubert — whose mother told the Daily News that he suffers from schizophrenia and wasn't sent to treatment after his release from prison — was indicted on charges of murder, attempted murder, assault, criminal possession of a weapon in connection to the June 1 attack.
Investigators are also trying to determine if St. Hubert was behind two other stabbings, police said.
Police are amassing evidence that St. Hubert is behind an attack on 18-year-old nursing student, Tanaya Copeland, who was stabbed to death blocks from the Boulevard Houses two days before the attacks on the children, police said. Copeland is expected to be mourned at a funeral on Wednesday night, her family said.
Investigators believe St. Hubert also stabbed a homeless man, Kyle Moore, on the southbound 1 train platform of the 18th Street subway station the morning of June 4, hours before he was caught by police.
Police said Tuesday they have no eyewitnesses in the subway attack and may have to rely on forensic evidence to connect that case.
