A man facing murder charges for stabbing twin sisters, one fatally, outside a Brooklyn bodega was fighting them and their friends off moments before he lashed out with the knife, surveillance video acquired by the Daily News shows.
For more than a year, Veo Kelly has been held without bail on Rikers Island awaiting trial for attacking Samyia and Sanyia Spain, 19, on St. Patrick’s Day 2024.
Kelly was drunk and had just left a party hall down the street, when he started chatting up the twins, who were getting food at Natural Plus deli at Fourth Ave. and St. Marks Place in Park Slope about 1:30 a.m.
Kelly had tried to get one of the girls’ phone numbers and got in an argument with the pair when they rebuffed him, cops said. During the ensuing fight with the two women, he stabbed Samyia in the chest and neck.
Samyia died of her wounds at New York-Presbyterian Brooklyn Methodist Hospital. Her twin, Sanyia, survived a stab wound to the arm.
But surveillance video recently given to Kelly’s lawyer as the case heads to trial shows five people pummeling Kelly before the fatal stabbing. The video was part of discovery evidence collected by prosecutors.
During the fight, Kelly is knocked to the ground and repeatedly kicked while he tries to cover his head and face, the video shows. After a few moments, his attackers back away.
Kelly tries to pick up his cell phone and belongings scattered on a bike lane when the twins return and begin punching him, the video shows. At that point, he lashes out with a blade, stabbing Samyia in the neck, the video shows.
Kelly’s attorney, Javier Solano, said his client had already been beaten and was defending himself from a second attack when he lashed out at the twins.
“The video clearly shows that Veo was being savagely beaten by a group of five girls that were punching him, kicking him in the face and stomping on his head,” Solano said. “There is no doubt that they were trying to seriously injure or kill him.”
A spokesman for the Brooklyn District Attorney’s office declined to comment on the video, citing the ongoing case.
On Thursday, Solano argued in Brooklyn Criminal Court that Solano should be released on bail but the judge ordered the suspect continue to be held without bail.
One of the girls who attacked Kelly was armed with a knife, Solano said. The video appears to show one of the young women with a knife in her hand following Veo after he stabs the twins.
“Any reasonable person under that situation would have defended themselves in any way they could,” the attorney said. “We’re confident that we’re going to win this trial. It’s just a shame that he has not been given bail and has to wait for his trial in jail.”
A police source with knowledge of the case said the grand jury saw the video and still indicted Kelly on murder charges.
March 18, 2024: Tragic twin stabs
New York Daily News Front page for March 18, 2024.
Self defense could be hard to prove, the source said, since it has to be established that he couldn’t escape his attackers, while the video suggests he could have.
Before the killing, Kelly had been arrested twice before, cops said. In one of the cases, he was accused of attacking his 18-year-old ex-girlfriend in Lower Manhattan in July 2023. The other arrests was for a robbery.
At the time of his arrest, NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said that Kelly was “very aggressive to one of the girls” as he tried to get her contact information.
“When they didn’t take to his advances, it got verbal and it got physical,” Kenny said.
In an exclusive interview with The News after the slaying, the surviving twin said she knew Kelly was trouble and was trying to get her sister away from him.
“I grabbed her phone and I was like, ‘Come with me, come with me,’” Sanyia recalled. “I was like, ‘Why are you talking to that boy?’ She said, ‘I don’t want to talk to that boy.’”
Samyia didn’t want to give the man her phone number, so she provided her Instagram handle instead, her sister said.
“She said she wasn’t going to follow him back,” Sanyia recounted. “That’s it. She said no.”
Kelly ran off after the attack. After getting death threats from people close to the twins, he turned himself in to authorities five days after the fatal clash.
Residents of Kelly’s building on Hancock St. in Bedford-Stuyvesant told the Daily News that three men went door-to-door through the entire building looking for the defendant after the stabbing.
One of the men allegedly threw a brick through a neighbor’s window in an attempt to intimidate Kelly, one resident claimed.
“They didn’t know what apartment [Kelly] was in,” she said. “It scared the hell out of us.”
About a month after her death, heartbroken friends and relatives created a mural on Wyckoff Ave. for Samyia.
Theodore Parisienne for New York Daily News
Samyia Spain was stabbed to death March 17, 2024, at Natural Plus deli on Fourth Ave. and St. Marks Place in Park Slope. (Theodore Parisienne for New York Daily News)
