Saturday, April 14, 2001
Detectives were questioning a 20-year-old man suspected of stabbing his mother to death in an argument in their Brooklyn apartment, police said yesterday.
The son apparently had been given an ultimatum by his mother, Christine Thompson, 44, to “straighten out his act” or leave home, a police source said.
Neighbors in the building on Lincoln Place in Prospect Heights heard loud music, arguing and crashing objects coming from the victim’s fifth-floor apartment during the night and predawn hours.
Downstairs tenant Naoko Ozaki, 25, said she called the building superintendent when water began pouring from her ceiling about 8 a.m.
When the super, Cresencio Alvarez, went to check out the problem in Thompson’s apartment, he heard her screaming for help and called 911.
“The police kicked the door down,” Alvarez said. “I saw only the leg. She was lying in the hallway. The blood was everywhere — on the wall and on the floor. I saw bloody footprints.”
Thompson, a guard, was rushed to New York Methodist Hospital, where she was pronounced dead from stab wounds.
The son, who works at a Manhattan Kmart, showed up at the apartment about an hour after police arrived and was arrested before being questioned at the 77th Precinct stationhouse. A kitchen knife believed to be the murder weapon was recovered.
The pouring water came from a sink that apparently had been left running before the fight, police said.
Neighbor Raul Morales, 61, said the victim had trouble with her two sons.
“The big one is in jail now. The other one is a little bit out of his mind,” he said. “He looks at you with wide-open eyes, or he’s laughing like he’s crazy.”
Original Story Date: 04/14/01
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