‘Ugly Betty’ actor – Michael L. Brea, an inspiring actor has been arrested after he allegedly stabbed his mother with a three-foot sword after a fight early Tuesday in their apartment in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, according to online media outlets. The Associated Press said, The 31-year-old actor is alleged to have killed his mother while screaming Bible passages.
Yannick Brea, 55-year-old, found dead in her Prospect Heights home that she shared with her son and his twin brother, Marcel, who was not home during the attack. When cops got inside the home, they found Brea kneeling with fatal lacerations to her head in a blood-spattered bathroom, the police said.
Brea had cuts to her head and was pronounced dead at the scene, Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly told the AP.
Neighbors on the first and third floors of the Brooklyn apartment told reporters they could hear screams outside and inside the building at about 1:30 a.m. They also claim cops refused to enter her apartment for about an hour despite their pleas.
Police officers found Michael with a 3-foot sword believed to be the weapon used to kill Brea, Kelly said.
Cops not acted promptly
Neighbors on the first and third floors of the Brooklyn apartment told reporters they could hear screams at about 1:30 a.m.
They also claim cops refused to enter her apartment for about an hour despite their pleas.
“I could hear her groaning inside … She was still alive, but they wouldn’t go in,” Clinton Clare, 52, who lived in the apartment below the Brea family, told the Daily News of New York.
“I heard this wild screaming,” Gregory Clare, 25, who’s father owns the building. He said he heard screams of “‘Repent, repent, sinner, sinner,’ over and over again,” and “‘You never accepted Jesus.’” Neighbors estimated police waited an hour before bursting into the apartment.
“I heard a ‘Help me!’ shriek,” said Vernal Bent, 18, who also lived in the apartment above. “Police kept knocking on the door. Knocking and knocking … All of us kept saying, ‘Open the door.'”
“They just kept saying protocol this and protocol that,” Clare added. “Now a woman’s dead who should be alive if only the police would have listened.”
But NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly said that the patrol cops handled the situation properly.
“It was a barricaded situation,” Kelly said. “When there is a barricade situation the responding patrol officers if possible wait for Emergency Service officers. They’re trained psychological technicians; they have additional equipment that enable them to better protect themselves because you don’t know the type of weapon… They take prudent precautions I believe that was prudent at that time.”
Michael has no prior arrests, and no previous domestic violence incidents had been reported at the home, police said.
In addition to the now-canceled ABC sitcom ‘Ugly Betty,’ the Haitian-American actor appeared as a dancer in ‘Step Up 3D,’ a film that was released in August, and starred in a campaign for the energy drink Full Throttle.
Ironically, in 2008, Michael gave away free turkey sandwiches on Thanksgiving and said, “I remember growing up and my mother was always feeding people who were less fortunate,” WSJ quoted him as writing. “My parents raised me to always share and to give charity in the name of God!”