Teen Twin Sisters Stabbed, One Fatally, For Rejecting Stranger’s Advances
A Brooklyn teen was fatally stabbed — and her twin sister wounded — after rejecting a drunken man’s advances outside a deli in the New York borough early Sunday, according to police and family members.
Samyia Spain and her twin sister, both 19, were attacked around 2:20 a.m. at Natural Plus deli on Fourth Avenue and St. Marks Place in Park Slope.
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A witness told the victims’ grandfather that the women were in the shop when a man approached Samyia and started hitting on her.
“She says, ‘I don’t want to be bothered with you,'” the grandfather, Alphonso Goodson, told New York Daily News. “Leave me alone.”
When the store owner kicked the man out of the deli, he flew off the handle, according to the grieving family member.
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'He started kicking on the door, started banging on the door,' he said. 'So I don’t know if they called the police.'
Samyia, her sister, and their cousin had gone to the deli to get food, and the victim’s godmother believes the killer was coming from a club down the street.
Samyia was stabbed in the chest and neck, police said. Medics took her to New York-Presbyterian Hospital Brooklyn Methodist, but she couldn’t be saved.
Her sister was taken to the same hospital in stable condition with a stab wound to the arm.
After the horrifying attack, Samyia’s sibling made calls to family.
“She says, ‘Granddaddy, Samyia got stabbed and she died,” said Goodson, 66. “I couldn’t believe it. When I got the call, I came as soon as I could.”
Deli worker Mohammed Albher described the siblings as long-time regulars at the store.
“They used to come every day,” he said. “They come, shake my hand. Say, how are you?”
Albher wasn’t working Saturday night, but the killing left him distraught.
“I don’t want to see nobody hurt — nobody, nobody,” he said, “She’s a nice girl.”
Samyia and her sister were born in Brooklyn and spent some time in North Carolina before coming back to the city.
“They wanted to come back to the city because this is what they know,” Goodson said. “It was too quiet down there.”
Samyia was working at a Walgreens pharmacy since graduating high school, he added.
“She was beautiful, very respectful,” Goodson said of Samyia. “My granddaughter was the best. I love both of them and I’m sorry to see that she’s leaving me now. What can I do?”
Police have made no arrests, but were looking for two men, one of them wearing a ski mask.
“The store got the video,” Goodson said. “Somebody knows, somebody’s gonna come forward.”
The teens were stabbed at the same deli where a woman was shot to death execution-style by her long-time ex-girlfriend three years ago in a terrifying, caught-on-video killing.
Nichelle Thomas, 52, was shot in the back of the head in broad daylight by her ex Latisha Bell on April 21, 2021.
Bell, who was convicted at trial of murder and other charges last month, remains locked up without bail as she awaits sentencing.
Saturday’s killing marks the second homicide so far this year in the 78th Precinct, which saw no murders in all of 2023.
In January, Jason Jackson and his girlfriend, Olga Kirshenbaum, both 34, who were found shot in the head in their Park Slope apartment in an apparent murder-suicide.
—Rebecca White, John Annese
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