A 12-year-old Bronx girl cops say was stabbed by her stepfather survived risky emergency surgery to remove a screw he then hammered up her nose into her brain — and her arrested attacker has attempted suicide, the Daily News has learned.
“It’s pretty much a miracle she made it through,” a law enforcement source said of the girl’s surgery.
The explosion of violence began about 11:15 p.m. last Wednesday during a clash inside the family’s sixth-floor apartment on E. 173rd St. near West Farms Road in Crotona Park East, just across the street from Starlight Park, officials said.
Suspect Joshua Burnside had just moved into the apartment a few weeks ago with his stepdaughter, his 5-year-old son and 2-year-old daughter and his 31-year-old ex-wife, neighbors said. The ex-wife is the mother of all three children.
During a heated argument, Burnside’s ex-wife picked up a knife to defend herself but he grabbed it out of her hands and stabbed her in the stomach and slashed her face with it, cops said.
When his ex-wife fled out of the apartment, Burnside turned on his horrified stepdaughter, who witnessed the attack on her mom, stabbing her multiple times in the body, face and head, according to cops.
The ex-wife, from outside the apartment, heard her daughter’s screams for help, a law enforcement source with knowledge of the case said.
“My child! My child! Give me my child!” the bleeding woman screamed through the closed door, a neighbor said.
“(The mom) was knocking on everybody’s door looking for help,” said a neighbor on the fifth floor who did not want to be named. “Her face was slashed and she was stabbed in the abdomen. She said she had been attacked, (that) it was her ex-husband and her kid might be dead.”
After stabbing the girl repeatedly, Burnside hammered a long screw up her nose into her brain, officials said.
Responding police took Burnside into custody without incident and charged him with assault, criminal possession of a weapon and endangering the welfare of a child.
“I can’t understand why he’d do something like that,” the suspect’s father, James Burnside, 74, said by phone Tuesday.
“I haven’t seen him in 20 years. It’s hard to believe. He didn’t seem like he could do something like that. Do you think he was on some kind of drugs? I didn’t even know he was in New York.”
Joshua Burnside was taken to a hospital for a psychiatric evaluation and made a suicide attempt, which has delayed his still-pending arraignment in Bronx Criminal Court, law enforcement sources said.
His ex-wife was taken to Jacobi Medical Center, where they were treated for minor injuries. Her two younger children, who were not harmed, were taken to the same hospital for evaluation.
The stepdaughter was taken to Cohen Children’s Medical Center, where she underwent the emergency surgery to remove the screw. She remains in critical but stable condition.
“To hear this, man, it really hurts my heart,” the ex-wife’s ex-boyfriend , who asked that his name not be used, said Tuesday. “It’s really sad because I loved her daughter like her daughter was my child … That guy is clearly a monster.”
Joshua Burnside was not on any of the paperwork connected to the apartment and was not supposed to be living there, a staff worker for the building said.
“They only recently moved in,” the worker said. “It was supposed to be only her and the children.”
