Four days after a 19-year-old woman was fatally stabbed in front of her twin sister outside a Brooklyn deli, law enforcement officials are still searching for the man who is accused of killing her when she rejected his advances.
The police identified the man as Veo Kelly, 20, of Brooklyn, Joseph Kenny, the chief of detectives, told reporters on Thursday. He said U.S. marshals are searching for Mr. Kelly, whose criminal history includes an arrest on robbery charges.
Early on Sunday, the woman, Samyia Spain, and her twin, Sanyia, had been up for hours playing games at their father’s apartment with friends. Afterward, the sisters and the rest of the group headed to the Natural Plus deli on the corner of Fourth Avenue and St. Marks Place in Park Slope, a go-to spot for the twins where the owners knew them by name.
The friends walked in around 2 a.m., the police said. While they waited for food, a group of young, drunk men including Mr. Kelly approached them, Chief Kenny said. Mr. Kelly began flirting with the twins, and pressed for their contact information, the police said.
Mr. Kelly had never met the twins and was in Park Slope for a party at a building next to the deli, Chief Kenny said.
When the women turned him away, he grew more aggressive. Moments later, the twins’ friends and deli workers pushed him and his companions out of the store and locked the door, according to a deli employee. The women and their friends stayed inside to finish their meal.
When they stepped back out, Mr. Kelly was waiting with a knife and attacked the twins, slashing Sanyia in the arm and fatally stabbing Samyia in the chest, the police said. Sanyia was treated at NewYork-Presbyterian Brooklyn, where her sister was pronounced dead.
Investigators this week searched Mr. Kelly’s apartment on Hancock Street in the Stuyvesant Heights neighborhood, the police said. They found the clothes he was wearing the night Samyia was killed.
In Park Slope, friends and neighbors were stunned that the twins were attacked, apparently for refusing to give someone a phone number. Many expressed anger at the owners of the building next door to the deli and blamed them for allowing parties where, neighbors said, underage people line up around the block on weekends to drink inside.
At a vigil on Wednesday night, more than a hundred people gathered outside the deli, many of them surrounding the twins’ father, Steven Spain, who wept as he struggled to talk about Samyia.
“How could you take her?” he cried out. “I don’t understand.”
His friends took turns talking into a megaphone, many of them warning young men in the neighborhood that women have a right to stay out late without having to worry about being attacked.
Darryl Hobson, a pastor and vice president of the 79th Precinct Clergy Council, who spoke, said he was struck by one young woman who described the pressure she has felt to give a man her phone number just so he would leave her alone.
“It just gave me another viewpoint into what is faced by women in the world,” Pastor Hobson, 65, said in an interview on Thursday.
The location of Samyia’s death, near the popular deli, was also troubling, said their neighbor, Najee Wright, 23. It is a popular gathering place for those who live in Wyckoff Gardens, the New York City Housing Authority development where the twins grew up, and it is also close to where their father lives. Workers at the deli knew their usual orders: Samyia favored the honey-glazed turkey sandwich, said Mohammed Albaher, a cashier at the store who had known the sisters since they were little girls.
Octavia Bell, the mother of an 18-year-old man who was with the twins that night, said her son is distraught, unable to cry or even speak about what happened.
“I’m really, really scared for him because hurt comes out in so many ways,” she said. “I don’t want it to be detrimental to him.”
Samyia and Sanyia “practically lived at my house,” Ms. Bell said. Samyia was in a close-knit group of friends and was part of a cooking club with Ms. Bell.
Samyia “was my favorite of the group,” Ms. Bell said. “The one with the head on her shoulders, that speaks sense into these kids.”
In the hours after Samyia was killed, Yvette Ramos, who grew up with the twins’ mother, watched Sanyia process her sister’s death. At first, she pushed down her pain to comfort her mother, Lashawn Goodson, whose grief is all consuming, Ms. Ramos said.
Sanyia was too filled with rage to talk with the police, Ms. Ramos said, and had to be convinced. “I told her, c’mon, get your sneakers on, we’re going to the precinct,” Ms. Ramos said.
Sanyia finally broke down about 24 hours after her sister’s death, Ms. Ramos said.
“She said, ‘Auntie, my sister’s not here.’ And all I can do is hold her and tell her it’s OK to cry, it’s OK to scream,” Ms. Ramos said.
