31-year-old Michael Brea has been taken into custody after allegedly murdering his 55-year-old mother with a 3-foot long samurai sword while screaming biblical passages.
- Nov 24, 2010
AceShowbiz - "Ugly Betty" and "Step Up 3-D" actor Michael Brea has been accused of murdering his own mother by slicing her head with a 3-foot long samurai sword, TMZ reported. The 31-year-old actor was taken into custody in Brooklyn on Tuesday morning, November 23.
According to the police, Michael cut off the head of his 55-year-old mother Yannick Brea while babbling about religion and repentance in their Brooklyn, New York home. When cops arrived at the scene at around 2:20 A.M., Brea reportedly clutched a bible. Police described the scenes as "extremely bloody."
After using taser to subdue Michael, cops took him to a nearby hospital for a psychiatric evaluation. The site mentioned that Michael will be turned to NYPD once his psychiatric evaluation, which was conducted with a police escort, is complete.
Of the murder, a neighbor shared to WPIX 11, "I hear the brother chasing her (his mother) through the house and he's just saying a bunch of (Bible) passages like, 'Repent, Repent, Repent'. I heard him chasing her through the house and I hear a loud scream and so I have my father call the cops, call 911."
Furthermore, 52-year-old Clinton Clare who lived in the apartment below the Brea family said, as quoted by Daily Mail, "I could hear her groaning inside... She was still alive, but they wouldn't go in." Another neighbor who lived in the apartment above, Vernal Bent, added, "I heard a 'Help me!' shriek. Police kept knocking on the door. Knocking and knocking... All of us kept saying, 'Open the door'."
Neighbors said that it took almost an hour for police to break into the room despite reportedly getting permission from the landlords to break the door down. "They just kept saying protocol this and protocol that. Now a woman's dead who should be alive if only the police would have listened," Gregory Clare, whose father owns the building, said. "It would have made a big difference. I think Miss Brea would still be here."
Meanwhile, NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly stated that officers had handled the situation properly. "When they're in a barricade situation, responding patrol officers, if possible, wait for emergency service officers to come," said the commissioner.
