‘WHAT ARE YOU DOING?’21

Mentally ill man knifed to death during violent struggle in Qns.

Kenroy Hurd stood in his cousin’s Queens apartment, a smile on his lips and two knives in his hand.

The mentally ill 23-year-old Jamaican man was fatally stabbed minutes later in a bloody fight with his cousin’s business partner as the terrified relative ran outside screaming for help, the stillshaken woman recounted Saturday.

Hurd removed the plastic sheaths from a new set of knives atop the fridge after calling his 33-year-old cousin into the room. Hurd, an erratic and unstable young man, was standing as his cousin’s friend watched the nightly news around 7:30 p.m. Friday.

Hurd was fiddling with the blades while flashing a grin.

“I said, “What are you doing?’ ” his cousin told the Daily News after cleaning the blood off the front stoop of her home in Saint Albans Saturday. “And he just smiled. It sounds like a story ...”

Her friend wrapped his arms around Hurd in selfpreservation, but the knifewielding assailant managed to stab him twice as the cousin watched in horror. Both men were stabbed repeatedly during the life-or-death struggle, with Hurd suffering fatal wounds as the two fought, witnesses told police.

“I saw Kenroy going after him,” she recalled. “I ran outside and called 911. I ran down the block yelling for help ... I don’t know how Kenroy got stabbed.”

Hurd died from his wounds at Jamaica Hospital, while the other man remained in critical condition Saturday at North Shore University Hospital. The 45-year-old survivor managed to fight his way outside, where the woman saw him bleeding from a deep gash to his arm before the police arrived.

No charges were filed against the cousin’s friend, with sources saying the killing was under investigation as a case of self-defense. He was visiting the apartment to discuss a business venture — the two were considering buying a home.

According to his cousin, who asked to remain anonymous, Hurd — father to a 3-year-old girl — flew into Florida from his home in Jamaica last month before taking a bus to Alabama. He was arrested there for disorderly conduct, and so she drove down south and brought him back to her Queens home.

Hurd was “acting a little paranoid,” with the cousin taking him to a local hospital after his arrival earlier this month. On Friday afternoon, he was bouncing around the apartment and behaving strangely, insisting that “he wanted to go somewhere but he didn’t know where,” she recalled.

It was a far cry from the “always quiet and always smiling” young man of years past, when she recalled Hurd as a friendly neat freak.

“I knew him growing up,” the cousin said Saturday. “Never in my wildest dreams.”