Attacked outside B’klyn home
A MASKED ATTACKER fatally stabbed a couple as they returned to their Brooklyn home Wednesday, police sources said.
Stephenson Bonaparte, 65, and Hazel Brown, 59, were walking on Winthrop St. near Rogers Ave. in Prospect-Lefferts Gardens when a man in a ski mask approached them about 6:40 p.m., cops said.
He knifed them both in the neck and ran off.
The pair was coming home after a day of work at their store, King Soloman Religious, on Rutland Road in East Flatbush, when they were attacked.
Police arrived and found Bonaparte bleeding to death on the street outside his three-story home. Brown was dead inside, cops said.
Their daughter and granddaughter ran from the house, past the carnage, police said. Medics rushed Bonaparte to Kings County Hospital, where he died just after 7 p.m., authorities said.
Cops are looking into the possibility that the bloodshed was the result of a robbery gone wrong.
“They had a store, a small business. Someone must have been monitoring them,” said next-door neighbor Berlium Stuart, 39. “They went to work and they came home. It’s really sad. They were really good people.”
Bonaparte and Brown had two grown daughters, Stuart said.
“They were always active on the block. They always gave money to the block association. Ms. Brown always said hi to everybody,” he said.
Another neighbor Carolyn Jenkins, 71, said she was headed to her mailbox when she saw Bonaparte on the ground in his yard, not moving.
“The person who found him was taking his pulse. I said, ‘You’d better call an ambulance. He needs help,’ ” she recalled.
Jenkins said groceries were strewn around the property.
“A family member came, and he was distraught. He wanted to go inside. He wanted to know what was going on,” she explained. “I’ve never seen anything like this. I’m in shock.”