Shortly before midnight on Jan. 24, a 45-year-old mother’s desperate screams pierced the calm of her Brooklyn building — causing neighbors to spring into action to help the woman as she was being attacked by a younger man armed with a large knife.
To their horror, the victim was being repeatedly stabbed by her own son, police and prosecutors said.
“That scream gave you goosebumps,” a neighbor who did not provide her name told the Daily News. “It was like their soul was being snatched from their body.”
Roselene Oliveira, dressed in pink pajamas and Crocs, was locked in a life-or-death struggle with 29-year-old Weverton Lino in a long, narrow hallway on the sixth floor of the East Flatbush building on E. 92nd St. and Lenox Road when neighbors left the safety of their apartments to help subdue the suspect.
Lino would stab his mother 13 times in all, prosecutors said. Oliveira, known by neighbors as a quiet tenant who frequently could be seen sitting and writing intently in her tidy apartment with the door ajar, did not survive.
It was not known what caused Lino, who lives in the Bronx, to fly into a murderous rage, but police had twice filed domestic incident reports after responding to arguments between the suspect and his mother, prosecutors said at his arraignment.
As the screaming continued, the terrified neighbor, 44, shooed her young sons away from the door and looked through the peephole into the hallway, watching as the assailant stabbed the helpless woman in the back of her neck with a knife at least 8 inches long.
“I saw the guy with a knife … And through the peephole, I saw two stabs,” she said.
Another neighbor, a 33-year-old man, had also been alarmed by the cries for help. After rushing into the hallway, the good Samaritan immediately tried to overpower the suspect.
“I had to do something,” said the neighbor, who did not want to be named. “Basically, I tackled him to the ground.”
But the suspect, who both neighbors said smelled strongly of alcohol, continued to struggle.
Meanwhile, the 44-year-old woman, seeing her neighbor land on top of Lino and the suspect still holding the knife, was on the phone frantically trying to get police to come.
Theodore Parisienne /New York Daily News
An NYPD officer outside the Brooklyn apartment where a 45-year-old woman was fatally stabbed. (Theodore Parisienne/New York Daily News)
“I’m on the phone with 911 and I explain to them what’s going on … I said ‘He’s stabbing her, she’s gonna die!’”
While speaking to a dispatcher, the 44-year-old woman, who works in a hospital, saw signs that Oliveira was dying.
“She arched back, and she was leaning against the wall,” said the neighbor. Oliveira then gasped, “and her eyes rolled over.”
The woman heard a groan and realized Oliveira was gone. So did the man holding the attacker down.
“[My neighbor] kept saying ‘Why did you do this? Why did you do this? You killed her, you killed her.’ And then [the suspect] started getting upset, like trying to hit him or something. Then he was trying to get up,” she said.
“That’s when [my neighbor] starts screaming for help. And we start screaming for help together. Nobody would look out in the hallway. I kept screaming and screaming, and nobody came. It felt like we was in [an] alley by ourselves.”
Around this time a third neighbor joined in to help hold down the stabber, who was still struggling on the floor with the other neighbor.
“They were fighting over the knife,” the man said. “I gotta give credit to the [neighbor]. He fought the guy, he held the guy down. [The stabber] had his arm stretched out with the kitchen knife.”
The man jumped in and tried to grab the knife, cutting himself in the process. But the stabber held on to the weapon.
That’s when the 44-year-old neighbor realized she had to do something before he broke free — so she grabbed a broom from her apartment.
“I took the broomstick, and I wanted him to think it was a gun,” she said. “I put it to his head, and I just had to act like I was gangster. I was like, ‘Don’t f—–g move, or we’re gonna blow your brains out.’ That’s when he relaxed some. Same time, I look up … the cops is coming.”
When police arrived at 11:40 p.m. they found the victim in the hallway with multiple stab wounds to her body.
Prosecutors said NYPD body-worn camera footage shows the neighbors pointing to Lino, who was “still gripping a knife.” Cops eventually tased him to get him under control.
“When [the police] tased him, he dropped the knife, and I passed them the knife and they pulled me to get away from him,” said the first male neighbor.
Asked what was going through his mind when he stepped in to help, he said he didn’t know.
“I’m asking myself that question too.”
The 44-year-old woman said she had a soft spot for Oliveira over the two years the victim lived in the building, sensing Oliveira was timid and fragile.
“I said to her, ‘If you ever need help, come and knock on my door … This was like seven months ago,” said the female neighbor. “She just smiled and said, ‘OK.’”
The neighbor felt Oliveira was trying to heed her advice and make it to her door when she was attacked.
Lino was ordered held without bail at Rikers Isand after he was arraigned on murder and weapons charges in Brooklyn Criminal Court Jan. 26. His lawyer, Wayne Bodden, said he plans to request his client undergo a psychiatric evaluation. When contacted by The News, Bodden said it was too early to comment on the case.
A week has passed since Oliveira was murdered, a bright green police notice sealing her apartment door shut a constant reminder of the horrifying incident, the screams and terror of that night still fresh in the minds of neighbors.
The 44-year-old woman said she couldn’t sleep for the two nights following the murder and gets anxious any time she sees anyone who looks remotely like the suspect.
“I need therapy,” she said.
