Veo Kelly faces charges in the killing of Samyia Spain. (Suspect screenshot from WNYW/YouTube; Victim’s photo from GoFundMe)
A 20-year-old man is accused of a drunken stabbing that killed a woman who spurned his advances outside a Brooklyn deli, authorities said.
Veo Kelly, 20, surrendered to New York police to face charges of murder and criminal possession of a weapon in the killing of Samyia Spain, 19, authorities said.
NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny told reporters the suspect was drunk when he encountered the victim at a deli on early Sunday morning. Spain, her twin and a friend had gone there to get food after a game night, the family said.
“He was very aggressive to one of the girls, trying to get her contact information,” Kenny said, the New York Daily News reported. “When they didn’t take to his advances, it got verbal, and it got physical.”
She gave him her Instagram handle rather than her phone number, and an argument and fight broke out, which spilled into the street, the victim’s family said on GoFundMe.
Spain was stabbed in the neck and the chest and died at a hospital. Her twin suffered a cut to the arm, police said. The surviving twin told the Daily News she tried to get her sister away from the suspect.
“I grabbed her phone, and I was like, ‘Come with me, come with me,’” the sister said. “I was like, ‘Why are you talking to that boy?’ She said, ‘I don’t want to talk to that boy.’”
The New York Post reported that the victim’s family and friends hurled insults at the suspect — “the bastard that killed my sister” and “F— you!” as he was escorted in handcuffs out of the New York Police Department’s 78th Precinct to court.
The victim’s father was crushed.
“How could he take her?” he told the Post in tears. “The animal that came out of there, and they let him in there with a knife.”
A man who told the newspaper he had known the suspect for years was shocked.
“I still can’t believe it,” the man told the paper. “How could you do that? Because someone rejected you? This is unforgivable.”
