His tragic last text before fatal B’klyn stab
Vic messaged pregnant fiancée; NYPD says he battled bouncers
Just minutes before a 37-yearold man was fatally stabbed outside a Brooklyn bar early Sunday, he messaged his pregnant fiancee to let her know he’d soon be home.
He also wanted to let her know he loved her.
“The last message I got from him was 2:39, and they said he passed at 2:50,” Maiy Seyedahmad, 34, told the Daily News. “[It said] he loves me so much, and he’s leaving.”
Shortly afterward, Daryl Dawkins was found knifed in the chest outside Catch 22 on Third Ave. near 73rd St. in Bay Ridge, according to police.
The couple, who were expecting a child in October, had met in September 2023, their first date at a restaurant a block from where Dawkins would take his last breaths. They quickly fell in love, embarking on a whirlwind relationship.
“Everything happened so fast, but it didn’t feel fast. It was just different, it’s like I’ve known him forever,” said Seyedahmad. “I’ve never met anyone like him.”
Dawkins, who grew up in Brooklyn but was living in Tobyhanna, Pa., moved back to New York to make a life with Seyedahmad.
“He said, I never wanted to come back to New York,” she said. “After two weeks or three, he moved in.”
The heartbroken fiancee said Dawkins was devoted to his three children, ages 4, 5 and 9, and regularly rounded them up from Pennsylvania, Manhattan and Long Island to bring to Brooklyn so they could all be together. He was overjoyed to be a new father again.
“It’s still is not hitting right, nothing makes sense,” said Seyedahmad, who heard from a shopkeeper on the block about Dawkins’ tragic last moments.
“Now I’m hearing he was pleading for his life, he was on his knees yelling,” said Seyedahmad. “He was yelling and he was calling ‘Ma,’ ‘Maiy’ — he was telling his mom to watch over the new baby.
“I don’t know who would want to do this to him,” she added. “It’s unfair that this person took a beautiful soul, not just from his kids, but from the world. I’m not going to rest until he gets justice and the person that did this is behind bars.”
NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said Tuesday that prior to the slaying, Dawkins had been making a scene in the bar.
“According to witnesses, he’s trying buy numerous women drinks,” Kenny said at a news briefing. “He’s being a little bit loud. At some point, he begins to argue with a female bartender about his bill.”
A male bartender tried to get Dawkins to chill out, to no effect, the chief added. As Dawkins complained about paying for a drink he never got, bouncers kicked him out, Kenny said.
Grainy video showed Dawkins swinging at one of the bouncers, an ensuing physical altercation and then the victim falling to the floor, according to the chief.
Dawkins was stabbed once in the heart, said Kenny, and died at 3:25 a.m. at a hospital. The bouncers have been identified, but no arrests have been made yet, said the chief.
Seyedahmad said Dawkins might have lived if he had gotten help sooner, remarking, “No one called the cops?”
The couple found out last month they were having a boy and were mulling over baby names, but Seyedahmad says she now knows what their son will be called — Daryl, after his father.
“He already has another son named after him,” said Seyedahmad. “We were thinking of different names but because of this I don’t want to give him a different name.”