Neighbors sympathize with the killer.
AB Wire
NEW YORK: A Pakistani American teenager in Brooklyn, New York, Hassan Razzaq, 19, was arrested and charged with stabbing his father, Mohammad Razzaq, 56, to death, in their house, on Sunday.
amNY reported Hassan Razzaq was charged with second-degree murder and criminal possession of a weapon, police said. Razzaq is accused of stabbing his father in the neck.
The argument inside the East Third Street in Kensington home they shared took a turn for the worse about 10 p.m. Saturday, police said. Razzaq then allegedly ran, but police caught up with him a short time later.
The New York Daily News reported the teenager snapped after suffering years of abuse, according to neighbors and police sources.
“First I heard the mother screaming. Then I saw the young fellow come out,” said Robert, a neighbor who lives across from the family and called 911 to report the incident. Robert declined to give his last name.
After what sounded like a struggle and a woman screaming, Hassan ran out of the home with a knife, said Robert, according to the Daily News.
“He came running out. I said, ‘What’s the matter?’ He said, ‘Bobby, please don’t get involved. Stay out of it.’ I said, ‘What did you do?’ And then he just took off,” Robert recalled.
Robert said the tragedy had been a long time coming.
“The father was very abusive,” Robert said. “He was beating that kid all day. I feel terrible for that boy. He was pushed. He was definitely pushed.”
Hassan told investigators that he and his sisters were tired of the physical abuse that their father subjected them to, police sources said.
“There’s always abuses. There’s always cops there,” Robert said of the Razzaq home, where Hassan, his four siblings and parents have lived for about eight years. “The kid’s a good kid. He was getting beat every night, beat every night.”
Despite what was described by neighbors as a well-known case of abuse in the Razzaq home, police were never called to the house to put a stop to the violence, law enforcement sources said.
Cops had been called to the home before for “verbal disputes,” but there was no reported history of violence between the father and son before Saturday, the sources said. It was not immediately clear who the prior incidents involved or how many there were at the home.
“I warned his father a number of times to keep his hands off his family. Should the boy be charged, he should be punished but not too harshly. He was protecting his family. It was sad,” Robert said. “This has been coming.”
The New York Post also reported a neighbor taking the side of the teenager.
“The son is a good son. He was getting beat every night,” a neighbor named Bobby said of Hassan Razzaq, according to the Post. “This was a tragedy waiting to happen. The neighborhood knows about it, the police officers know about it, everybody knows about it.”
He added: “I don’t feel one bit sorry for the victim. That’s how sad it is.”