The Staten Island teen accused of beheading his mom\u2019s boyfriend allegedly showed his little sister the mutilated body \u2014 then asked if she wanted their mother to live.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cShe said, \u2018Are you gonna hurt mom?\u2019 \u201d the suspect\u2019s weeping mother, Alicia Zayas, said of her 16-year-old daughter Bri\u2019s encounter with her blood-soaked son, Damien Hurstel, in the Monday horror.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd he said, \u2018Do you want her to live?\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd she said, \u2018Yes, please.\u2019 <\/p>\n
\u201cHe said, \u2018Okay, she\u2019ll live.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n
The suspect had been on psychiatric medications since he was at least 14, his mother, Alicia Zayas, said. Paul Martinka<\/p>\n
Bri then asked her brother if she could leave the blood-spattered bathroom where, sources said, the killer removed some of Anthony Casalaspro\u2019s brain with a spoon. Casalaspro was the mother\u2019s live-in boyfriend.<\/p>\n
\u201cAre you gonna tell mom?\u201d Damien then asked his sister.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo,\u201d she replied, according to a heartbroken Zayas, who spoke exclusively to The Post Friday in a 30-minute sitdown in the office of her attorneys\u2019 Mark Fonte and Louis Gelormino.<\/p>\n
Bri fled, hid behind a backyard shed and immediately phoned her mother.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe called me scared,\u201d the 39-year-old Zayas recalled. \u201cI could hear it in her voice. I said, \u2018Are you somewhere safe?\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cShe said, \u2018Damien killed Anthony, and he doesn\u2019t have a head.\u2019 \u201d <\/p>\n
Cops said Damien, 19, confessed to stabbing Casalaspro, 45, and sawing off his head inside the family\u2019s Cary Avenue home in West Brighton. He faces charges of second-degree murder, manslaughter and criminal possession of a weapon.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cDo you want her to live?\u201d Hurstel allegedly asked his younger sister of their mom. Luiz C. Ribeiro for New York Post<\/p>\n
A photo of the grisly scene shows the severed head lying next to the corpse, shirtless and clad in red briefs, inside a walk-in shower. On the floor nearby is a bowl and a saw. A plastic sauce ladle lies on the victim\u2019s chest, while the handle of a silver-colored spoon sticks out of the dismembered skull.<\/p>\n
A desperate, panicked Zayas raced home to find Bri. Before she rushed into the house, where the front door was wide open, she told her daughter, \u201cIf you don\u2019t hear from me in two minutes, you need to call 911. Tell them to come quickly.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
The terrified mom walked upstairs with her keys in her hand and entered her family\u2019s apartment.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s blood everywhere,\u201d she recalled. Damien was in the kitchen, wearing a disturbing expression.<\/p>\n
\u201cHis eyes looked different,\u201d she recalled. \u201cHe has light eyes. The eyes looked dark. It looked weird. I said \u2018Damien, what\u2019s going on? What\u2019s wrong, honey? What are you doing?\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cCleaning,\u201d Damien told his mother flatly, \u201cas if he\u2019s cleaning dishes, like it\u2019s normal.\u201d<\/p>\n
Anthony Casalaspro and Zayas were planning on buying a home together, she said. Louis Ortiz<\/p>\n
She then asked where Casalaspro was and her son said he was in the bathroom.\u00a0But \u201cyou don\u2019t want to go in there,\u2019\u201d he chillingly warned.<\/p>\n
\u201cI said, \u2018Well, Damien, I have to go in there. I have to see Anthony.\u2019 \u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
The frightened mom slowly moved toward the bathroom \u2014 too scared to turn her back to her son.\u00a0<\/p>\n
She peered at the unimaginable bloodshed and began to scream, \u201cWhy? Why? Why? Why? He loves you. Why would you do this?\u2019\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
She called 911.<\/p>\n
\u201cCome quick,\u201d she told the dispatcher. \u201cMy son killed my boyfriend.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey said, \u2018Can he be saved? \u2026 How do you know he\u2019s dead?\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cI said, \u2018He has no head.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n
The bloody scene, including a plastic ladle on top of the body and a bowl next to the remains. Obtained by the New York Post<\/p>\n
Zayas then ran outside and waited for police, begging the arriving officers not to hurt her son.<\/p>\n
The mother insists this tragedy was preventable if the medical system had worked for her several mentally ill son.<\/p>\n
Doctors changed her son\u2019s medications in January without notifying her, said Zayas, who claimed Damien went downhill after the switch.\u00a0<\/p>\n
She only found out when a CVS pharmacist pointed out that Damien needed to be weaned slowly off his previous medication, the antipsychotic drug Depakote. <\/p>\n
She was never told what new meds he was supposed to be taking. Her son\u2019s psychiatrist would not discuss treatment because Damien was now a legal adult.<\/p>\n
Zayas wept as she recounted her daughter\u2019s description of the terrifying scene. Paul Martinka<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy wouldn\u2019t they tell us?\u201d said Zayas. \u201cThey\u2019re doctors. I\u2019m sure they knew.\u201d<\/p>\n
Zayas insisted Casalaspro was not abusive \u2014 but said her son could be violent. He beat her last year, on her birthday, when she asked him to clean the kitchen, she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Damien started having mental health issues when he was only 6 \u2014 after his father went to prison, she said. He began hallucinating at age 13 \u2014 after being sexually abused by another student at a school in Queens, said Zayas, who declined to give more details.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The crime scene at the Cary Avenue home. Kyle Mazza\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n
He was diagnosed with PTSD and major depression, she said. He saw \u201cshadow figures, very disturbing images, almost like horror movies,\u201d she said. He would draw them for her. <\/p>\n
That is when he was first prescribed antipsychotics.<\/p>\n
Damien tried to kill himself twice, and was hospitalized twice, but by 14 was stable and on medication, she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Zayas spoke to The Post with her lawyers, Mark Fonte and Louis Gelormino. Paul Martinka<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m just devastated,\u201d she said. \u201cMy son wasn\u2019t like this before. He was a good boy. Something is seriously wrong with him.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
When he was in high school, she was able to keep track of his doctors and medications. But despite her best efforts, she said she was cut out of the equation once he graduated in January and went into an adult mental-health program.<\/p>\n
She attended his first two appointments with a new psychiatrist, but then her son told her she couldn\u2019t come anymore.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t even know what doctors he was going to,\u201d the mom said. \u201cI don\u2019t even know if he was going to all the appointments. Every morning I remind him to take his medications. He said he was taking it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe ask the public to with hold judgment,\u201d said Gelormino. \u201cDamien Hurstel is an extremely troubled young man with a long documented history of mental health issues. Our firm is aggressively trying pursue his psychiatric history so we can get a complete picture of the circumstances leading up this tragedy.\u201d<\/p>\n
She and Casalaspro, a city Sanitation worker, were in the process of buying a home not far from where they lived. <\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m heartbroken,\u201d she said. \u201cAnthony was a great man. He was helping me raise my kids. He didn\u2019t have to do that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Staten Island teen accused of beheading his mom\u2019s boyfriend allegedly showed his little sister the mutilated body…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1898,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[303,1027,2441,57,9,24,63,2442,134,136,135,58],"class_list":{"0":"post-1897","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-staten-island","8":"tag-crime","9":"tag-homicide","10":"tag-mental-illness","11":"tag-metro","12":"tag-new-york","13":"tag-new-york-city","14":"tag-nyc","15":"tag-stabbings","16":"tag-staten-island","17":"tag-staten-island-headlines","18":"tag-staten-island-news","19":"tag-us-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1897","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1897"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1897\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1898"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1897"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1897"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1897"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}