In a tragic incident, a high school senior from upstate New York was discovered deceased in her apartment shortly after ending a brief phone call with her estranged father. This call occurred just before a friend allegedly attacked her.
Breanne Keane, aged 19 and a senior at Lehman Alternative Community School, was preparing for her graduation in June. However, she was tragically found stabbed to death in her Cayuga Heights apartment on Saturday.
The Cayuga Heights Police Department reported that Damian Stewart, 20, was apprehended at the scene of the crime.
Breanne’s father, Matthew Keane, shared that she had aspirations of enrolling in a canine training management program at SUNY Cobleskill following her graduation.
Matthew recounted to WSYR that their last conversation occurred at 1:20 p.m. on Saturday, less than an hour before police in Cayuga Heights were alerted to the stabbing incident at the apartment complex.
“She mentioned she was doing fine and was spending time with a friend,” Matthew Keane conveyed to the news outlet.
“The call lasted 41 seconds, and that was the last time I spoke with Breanne.”
When police arrived at the father’s home in Ithaca later that evening, he “knew it wasn’t good.”
“I just dropped to my knees,” he told the outlet. “It was really hard.”
Matthew Keane told Syracuse.com that his daughter was still alive when police reached him, but died while he was headed to the hospital.
She lived alone in the apartment provided by the Learning Web, an Ithaca-based charity that arranges housing and career opportunities for local at-risk youth, according to the outlet.
Over the weekend, Matthew Keane posted a series of unbalanced Facebook posts that abruptly pivoted from celebrating to condemning his slain daughter.
In one post, he alluded to an alleged romantic relationship she had with Stewart and accused other adults who oversaw their dates of contributing to her death.
Stewart is being held on a second-degree murder charge in the Tompkins County Jail.
