A Guyanese man was charged with murder after he confessed to throwing his 4-year-old brother off the roof of their 7-storey building on Saturday.
After committing the act, the mentally ill man calmly walked up and told the police what he had done. The dead child has been identified as Shimron Smith while his eldest brother who committed the act is Shawn Smith.
According to the New York Post, the suspect was admitted to Kings County Hospital in July for psychiatric treatment but had since stopped taking the medication prescribed to treat his schizophrenia, family members told cops.
According to the New York Post Smith said “I just killed my brother — I took my brother up to the roof and I threw him off,” before leading them to where his brother’s broken body lay twisted in a trash-strewn Midwood courtyard.
Shawn was charged Saturday afternoon with his brother’s murder, which happened at 2:45h, minutes after he allegedly led the boy up to the roof. He had no prior criminal record or history of violence, police sources noted.
But he recently told his family that voices in his head were ordering him to do “something bad—” though he didn’t, or couldn’t, warn anyone what that might be, police sources said.
And he’d been suicidal in the past — prompting several 911 calls in April, when he climbed up to the same roof at Nostrand Avenue, near Avenue K, and onlookers feared he might jump, the sources said.
