Bronx 14-year-old murder suspect bullied over missing iPhone before stabbing: neighbor
A feud over a stolen iPhone turned best friends into mortal enemies, with an unhinged Bronx teen fatally stabbing his ex-pal after weeks of constant torment and harassment, according to neighbors.
Family friends of murder suspect Noel Estevez said the 14-year-old finally snapped after the unrelenting abuse led him to a failed suicide attempt and two weeks in a psychiatric facility.
The troubled teen was sprung from a Bronx hospital just eight days before the fatal stabbing of Facebook friend and eighth-grade classmate Timothy Crump, the friends said.
“It was constant bullying for three months — that’s what drove him to this,” neighbor Milagos Arroyo, 25, said inside the Estevez family’s Bronx apartment.
“At one point, Timothy and Noel, they were best friends,” continued Arroyo. “I always used to see them riding skateboards all the time.”
The friendship crumbled under an avalanche of abuse inflicted on Estevez after Crump accused his buddy of stealing the phone, said Arroyo and fellow neighbor Marisol Perez.
Arroyo said the boy’s mother told her that he feared the bullies were going to kill him.
“He kept saying, ‘I’m gonna die, I’m gonna die, I’m gonna die,’” Arroyto recounted. “They would call the apartment, they would come to the apartment, write on the door. They would constantly harass him.”
The terrified teen’s father even went to the principle of Intermediate School one day before the fatal stabbing to gripe about the ongoing cruelty, Perez said.
Both the boy’s parents lobbied to get Estevez out of I.S. 117 via a “safety transfer” prior to the fatal fight — only to have their pleas land on deaf ears.
“The school failed, the police failed, everyone failed,” said Perez. “The kid was crying out for help. He never should have gone to school those last eight days.”
The despondent Estevez — who resolutely denied taking the cellphone — tried to hang himself with a belt in the closet of his room May 28, the family friends said.
Crump, 14, was suspended from the Bronx school last year after breaking another student’s jaw with a punch, said Perez. City education officials would not confirm that report.
Cops said Crump walked up to the emotionally unstable Estevez at dismissal Wednesday afternoon and began punching him without provocation.
Estevez then pulled a kitchen knife, plunging the blade three times into Crump’s chest before school safety agents took him into custody.
Blood stains the pavement where Noel Estevez, 14, allegedly stabbed and killed Timothy Crump outside their Bronx middle school.
Though Crump and Estevez were once best buddies, neighbors in Estevez’s building claimed he was beaten and taunted by the slain teen.
A porter in the eighth-grader’s building said the boy was harassed for the past several weeks by a pack of bullies who repeatedly urinated on his apartment door.
Estevez would run in sheer panic when the half-dozen youths — once his friends — began chasing him through the streets near his Bronx apartment, building worker Jorge Guerrero said Thursday.
“The boys, they were bullying him,” said Guerrero, 47, adding that he was called a half-dozen times to mop up the urine at the Estevez apartment.
“He used to be part of their group, but I think they threw him out and they started teasing him.”
Students returned Thursday to the school, where two unlit candles marked the spot on the sidewalk where Crump was stabbed.
Another memorial around the corner featured more candles, a bouquet of yellow and white flowers, and messages from students.
“Ima miss you bro I love you,” read one.
The accused teen killer was in a constant state of fear in the weeks before his arrest, according to Guerrero.
Estevez couldn’t even escape inside his building because one of his tormentors lived there and would let the others inside, the porter said.
“They would chase him into the building and he would run into a friend’s apartment,” said Guerrero. “He told a neighbor that he was scared and he didn’t want to go outside.”
The boy’s mother reportedly filed a complaint with police last week about the incidents.
Guerrero was astounded by both the stabbing and the arrest of the victimized Estevez.
“He was the best kid in the world,” said Guererro. “It’s a shame. It’s painful situation. I’m really sad. He used to call me his best friend.”
Culled from NY Daily News