Game Over for 9-year-old Anthony Maldonado

[Dakota]

He was killed over a game.

A 9-year-old boy visiting his family in Harlem sat down Saturday to play a video game starring his skateboarding hero, Tony Hawk.

By 3:30 a.m., play time turned to horror.

Police said a 25-year-old man plunged a knife in the boy's chest, sending him staggering to his uncle's bedroom door.

"Uncle, uncle, I've been stabbed!" Anthony Maldonado cried out, before collapsing on the floor, the uncle Carlos Juela, 31, recalled.

Paramedics rushed Anthony from the La Salle St. apartment to St. Luke's Roosevelt Hospital, but the New Jersey boy died in less than an hour, police said.

"Anthony was playing ... on PlayStation when his friend came and stabbed him," said the boy's distraught grandfather, Antonio Juela, 59. "My grandson died over a video game."
[...]

Police questioned a 25-year-old man at the 26th Precinct stationhouse. Cops said he was the victim's cousin, while relatives said the man being grilled was a family friend who lived at the uncle's apartment. He hasn't been charged, but a police source said cops aren't pursuing other suspects.

Anthony was a fourth-grader at Lindbergh Elementary in Palisades Park, N.J. He loved skateboarding, and was ecstatic about getting a PlayStation system for Christmas.

He spent the holidays at his grandfather's Harlem apartment while his mother remained at home. He was spending the night at his uncle's apartment when he was killed.

Dolores Juela told the Daily News that her brother, Carlos Juela, rents an apartment in the Grant Houses along with three brothers who are not related to the family.

At one point, Carlos Juela, 31, went to sleep and left Anthony in the care of the three brothers, Dolores Juela said.

Two of the brothers left the apartment to get food at about 3 a.m. Anthony and the 25-year-old brother remained behind because they were so engrossed in playing the video game, Dolores Juela said.

Roughly 30 minutes later, Anthony was stabbed.
[...]

Police said Anthony was stabbed several times. A relative said his face had also been slashed and that he had bruises on his arms - perhaps indicating a struggle before the stabbing.

Cops investigating the murder yesterday shut down power to the building's elevator and used flashlights to search the shaft for the murder weapon.

Dolores Juela said the 25-year-old's mother told her that her son was guilty of the shocking crime.

"She said he was sick," Dolores Juela recalled.

Anthony's uncle confirmed the 25-year-old lived in the apartment.

"He was a friend. I can't believe this happened," Carlos Juela said. "He doesn't act right on the street but he always minded his manners in the house."

Anthony's grandfather could not get over why an adult would stab his "lovely" little grandson.

"Anthony was a loving child who loved his PlayStation," Antonio Juela said. "He got the PlayStation for Christmas and was very happy. He was so happy."

http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local...lway_of_harlem_housing_project_while_vis.html

The suspect's name is Alex Morales according to a FoxNY article.

9-year-old Anthony Maldonado

 

[TheMeaningOfItAll]

What a beautiful smile he had. So tragic. Over a video game. *shakes head*

 

[OMalley]

Terribly sad.​

 

[sheevaa]

Holy shit. I get competitive when I play games too, but not like that! Poor kid.

 

[crickett]

Poor baby. My son was so happy over his Nintendo 64 years ago. Replaced over the years by equal happiness with an XBOX and now an XBOX 360. Such childish sweet enthusiasm.
My GOD, what is wrong with an adult to have them kill a beautiful happy child over a game?

RIP sweet angel. May you receive justice.

 

[MadeaBecBec]

Alejandro Morales, 25 being arrested (Photo by Yana Paskova)

At the apartment in Palisades Park where the boy lived, his mother, Dolores Juela, 35, stood in the living room amid framed pictures of her son and expressed shock over his sudden and violent death.

Relatives came and went. Some brought flowers. A Christmas tree stood in the corner of the room, opposite a wall with photos of Anthony on it. On a small table, candles were arrayed.

Ms. Juela said that Anthony went to Manhattan on Friday to visit her father — his grandfather — who a roommate of the grandfather said lived on Old Broadway near the building on La Salle Street. Somehow, the boy wound up in the uncle’s apartment.

“I can’t understand why he kill my son,â€￾ Ms. Juela said. “I don’t know why he take my son. He is a little child.â€￾

Ms. Juela said she spoke to her son around 3 p.m. on Friday and everything sounded fine.

“He liked to play with everybody,â€￾ Ms. Juela said.

An aunt of the boy, Gina Rivera, 38, who was also in the home in New Jersey, said her nephew, a fourth-grader who attended a school in Palisades Park, was “a really good boy.â€￾

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/03/nyregion/03stab.html

So Sorry Anthony, Your joy and excitement turned to horror and death at the hands of an imbecile. I pray for swift justice! Godspeed Anthony, Godspeed!

 

[Pene784]

I think people are just assuming this child was killed over a video game because that is what the child was doing the last time the other people in the apartment saw him. Was the stabbing really over the video game or had something else happened when all the other people were out of the room? One of the witnesses reported that the boy had bruises on his arms, perhaps from restraint? I will be following this story to see if the autopsy reports any other findings and also to see if the suspect confesses.

 

[everhopeful]

What a sweet little face. Okay, even if he wasn't killed over the game, it's pretty clear that an 8-year-old shouldn't be able to provoke a 25-year-old into stabbing him. That being said, I used to live with a family friend who was my age but had a severe head injury, and he used to fly into the worst rages, and I can totally see him doing something like this if he's still the same as he always was. I cut ties with the family after he started beating his wife.

I'm so glad I'm not in that situation anymore!

 

[Misskittychaos]

I've seen "Gamer Rage" get out of control and seriously....I wouldn't be overly surprised if the guy lost and someone talked shit and the kid got caught in the "cross fire"...

 

[Dakota]

A man accused of fatally stabbing a Palisades Park boy was supposed to be back at the halfway house where he lived on Dec. 30, three days before the attack, a parole official said Monday.

But the family of murder suspect Alejandro Morales, 25, said that he had been staying for more than a week at his mother’s Morningside Heights apartment when, according to New York City police, he killed 9-year-old Anthony Maldonado on Saturday.

The victim’s uncle, Carlos Juela, who shares the apartment with Morales’ mother and her two other sons, said that Morales was told last week not to report back to the halfway house because no beds were available. Juela did not know who told Morales not to return to the facility.

A spokeswoman for the New York State Division of Parole, Heather Groll, couldn’t confirm Juela’s account but said the agency is currently reviewing Morales’ case.

Morales is currently at Bellevue Hospital Center in New York City and will not be arraigned in court until he is released, New York police officials said.
[...]

“He had visions. He saw rats and spiders when they didn’t exist,” Juela said, sitting in his grieving sister’s Palisades Park home with other family members. “We knew he had problems, but we didn’t believe he could do something like this.”
[...]

“I don’t know if he saw the kid and thought it was someone who he had to defend himself against or what,” Juela said.
[...]

He was also incarcerated in a New York State prison on an attempted assault conviction between 2005 and May 2009, when he was released to parole supervision, according to Groll.

Alejandro Morales was processed into the system under the alias Michael Jacob and was listed under parole records by that name, though Groll did not know why.

On Aug. 4, 2009, he attacked someone on a transit bus in New York City and was charged with assault, Groll said. However, the victim in the case was unable to testify at Morales’ parole revocation hearing and the agency could not substantiate the charge.

Following the attack, parole officials tried to get Morales into a residential program and finally succeeded in October, Groll said.
[...]

Juela said that the family took Morales to a psychiatrist after a Christmas Eve incident in which he ran through a movie theater, fleeing from an imaginary rat.

“He said it was chasing him,” Juela said.

The psychiatrist sent Morales to a hospital on New Year’s Eve, where he was given medication and discharged, Juela said.

Carmen Morales said her brother had expressed at a psychiatrist’s office that he wanted to hurt someone, but he was given extra medicine and reported feeling fine.

Anthony’s mother, Dolores Juela, said she trusted her brother that he never could have foreseen the crime, adding that she didn’t know her son would be in an apartment with a mentally ill man.

“Why did they let him leave?” Dolores Juela said, referring to the hospital where he was evaluated. “The person was sick. It’s the fault of the people who let him go.”

http://www.northjersey.com/news/Man...s_Park_boy_was_expected_at_halfway_house.html

 

[Rawrehz]

Why would these people leave this mental case alone with a 9 yr old boy at 3 am anyway? Yes, playing video games and such may seem innnocent, but when you know someone isn't all right in the head in the first place...why chance it?

I feel sorry for this family and their lost one. I hope this will make them question their judgement for future scenraios, especially being involved with mentally ill "family friends."

 

[StormReaper]

They had plenty of warning something was wrong.. Why didn't they institute the Baker Act??? I understand it was the holidays but damn.... Family or not, 2 separate instances within a week... That is some serious red flags... I am not in any way saying the family deserved it... Not at all... But between the family and the hospitals, someone should have done something more... Maybe not leave him alone.. supervise him more closely... You cant tell me people in the house weren't aware of his conditions and meds needed... He should have been more closely supervised...

The family should check if they have a claim for a wrongful death suit..

 

[Rockin Ma]

The man accused of fatally stabbing a 9-year-old boy in an Upper Manhattan apartment over the weekend has suffered from schizophrenia for many years and was paroled from prison in May after serving five years for assault, according to family members and the police.

The man, Alejandro Morales, 25, who was admitted to Bellevue Hospital Center on Sunday, first told investigators that intruders had tried to break into the apartment to rob him and said nothing about the boy, Anthony Maldonado of Palisades Park, N.J., according to a law enforcement official with direct knowledge of the case. Mr. Morales’s story shifted a few more times before he admitted that he stabbed the boy, the official said.

“I don’t know if he’s too clear as to why,â€￾ said the official, who spoke only on the condition of anonymity because he did

not want to be identified discussing a continuing investigation.

In explaining why he killed Anthony, Mr. Morales told investigators that the 9-year-old provoked the attack and that the dispute was not related to the video game, according to the police. The police declined to provide details on how Mr. Morales claimed he was provoked.

Some of what the suspect said was confusing and difficult to decipher, according to the law enforcement official. Prosecutors from the Manhattan district attorney’s office began to talk to Mr. Morales for a videotaped statement, but it was unclear how long he was videotaped or what was said during that part of the interview, the official said.

Mr. Morales’s mother, Antonia Morales, 47, said in an interview in Spanish on Sunday that her son had suffered from schizophrenia for the past decade and was heavily medicated, taking five to six pills a day to try to control his behavior.

According to Ms. Morales, Mr. Morales was released from a prison near Buffalo in May after serving five years on an assault conviction. The police said he had hit another subway passenger with a bottle without provocation, injuring the victim’s eye.

In August, Mr. Morales was charged with punching a man on the Upper West Side several times. Mrs. Morales said that her son was on his way to a psychiatric group meeting on 23rd Street when the encounter occurred.

Ms. Morales said that her son’s parole officer ordered him to enter a halfway house in Brooklyn for a year after his arrest in August. She said her son left the halfway house on Christmas Eve and had a mental disturbance later that day at a theater where he went to see “Sherlock Holmesâ€￾ with a brother.

When he got to her apartment that night, he told her that he wanted to kill somebody, Ms. Morales said. She said that she tried to calm him and get him to go back to the halfway house. However, Mr. Morales did not return to the halfway house, she said. But the police said on Sunday that he had been allowed to move to his mother’s address. Ms. Morales is the companion of Carlos Juela, an uncle of Anthony’s.

The boy was stabbed a number of times and had slashes on his face, according to the law enforcement official with direct knowledge of the case. Investigators recovered a knife that they believed was used to kill Anthony, but there was no visible blood on it, the official said. The knife is being examined, the official said.

The medical examiner’s office said that the boy died from a wound to his torso that perforated his left lung and damaged a major blood vessel.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/04/nyregion/04boy.html

 

[Krystal]

Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity...

He was acquitted on the murder charge and found not responsible by reason of mental disease or defect on the manslaughter. He still faces up to life in a secure psychiatric facility.

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york...cks-prison-insanity-defense-article-1.2278993

Oh, and after the verdict and the jury had left the courtroom, he punched his attorney in the face... I guess he was just trying to make sure everyone realized that the jury reached the correct verdict :shrug:. Or his lawyer pissed him off, I don't know.:shrug:

 

[rod2pop]

Let's hope he's locked up some-fucking-where to protect others. As evidenced by his post-court festivities, he has a problem that isn't going away nor, I daresay, can be fixed - unless he's medicated into a coma or something.

 

[lithiumgirl]

Wow...More consideration for the perpetrator than the victim likely got in his entire life. Moms not home, grandpa, uncle...this kid never had one solid you're always there for me person in his life. Shittty.

 

[BostonBurns]

I'm so tired of all you crazy fuckers getting all the breaks and consideration in our society. Now that he's officially crazy we can all pay him social security

 

[JackBurton]

I hate the mentally ill

 

[lithiumgirl]

I hate the mentally ill[/

I agree with this...but only because I went through it in the early 2000's. I had trust issues, that didn't involve another person...I had trust issues with myself. (pretty heavy shit right there) looking back I can honestly say its my fault...I was being a coward.