A Staten Island adolescent, accused of murdering his mother’s boyfriend in a shocking act, reportedly displayed the gruesome scene to his younger sister and asked if she wanted their mother to survive.
In emotional testimony, Alicia Zayas, the suspect’s mother, recounted her 16-year-old daughter Bri’s horrifying encounter with her brother Damien Hurstel, 19, after the incident on Monday.
“She asked, ‘Are you going to hurt mom?’ ” Zayas recalled, quoting Bri’s fearful response when confronted with her brother’s bloody actions.
“He replied, ‘Do you want her to live?’ ”
“She answered, ‘Yes, please.’ ”
“He said, ‘Okay, she’ll live.’ ”
Bri then inquired if she could leave the blood-soaked bathroom, where, sources indicate, Damien had gruesomely removed parts of Anthony Casalaspro’s brain with a spoon. Casalaspro was Zayas’s live-in partner.
“Are you going to tell mom?” Damien reportedly asked his sister.
“No,” she hesitantly answered, as recounted by a devastated Zayas, who spoke to The Post in a detailed interview with her attorneys, Mark Fonte and Louis Gelormino.
Bri quickly sought refuge behind a shed and immediately called her mother.
“She was scared when she called me,” Zayas shared. “I could hear it in her voice. I asked, ‘Are you safe?’
“She replied, ‘Damien killed Anthony, and he doesn’t have a head.’”
Authorities reported that Damien confessed to fatally stabbing Casalaspro, 45, and decapitating him inside their shared home on Cary Avenue in West Brighton. He faces numerous charges, including second-degree murder, manslaughter, and criminal possession of a weapon.
A disturbing photograph from the scene shows the severed head placed disturbingly next to the body, which lay shirtless and partially clad, in a walk-in shower. Nearby, a bowl and saw were found, along with a plastic ladle resting on the victim’s chest.
A frantic Zayas rushed home to find Bri. Before entering the house, with the front door ajar, she warned her daughter, “If you don’t hear from me in two minutes, call 911. Tell them to hurry.”
The terrified mother proceeded upstairs, keys in hand, and entered their apartment.
“There was blood everywhere,” she vividly recalled. Damien was in the kitchen, wearing a disconcerting expression.
“His appearance was off,” she noted. “He has light eyes, but they looked dark and strange. I said, ‘Damien, what’s going on? What are you doing?’”
“Cleaning,” he responded flatly, as if it was an everyday task.
When she asked about Casalaspro’s whereabouts, Damien pointed to the bathroom, ominously cautioning, “You don’t want to go in there.”
“I insisted, ‘I have to see Anthony,’” she replied, cautiously nearing the bathroom—too fearful to turn away from her son.
Upon glimpsing the unimaginable chaos, she screamed, “Why? Why? Why would you do this? He loved you!”
She called 911, pleading, “Please come quick. My son has killed my boyfriend.”
“They asked, ‘Can he be saved? … How do you know he’s dead?’”
“I told them, ‘He has no head.’”
Zayas ran outside to wait for the police, desperately urging arriving officers not to harm her son.
The mother believes the tragedy could have been prevented if the mental health system had adequately supported her son. She claimed that in January, doctors altered Damien’s medications without informing her, after which she noticed a significant decline in his condition.
The alarming situation only came to her attention when a pharmacist advised her that Damien needed to be gradually weaned off his previous medication, the antipsychotic Depakote.
Lamentably, she learned nothing about the new medications prescribed. After her son turned 18, his psychiatrist would not discuss his treatment with her.
“Why wouldn’t they communicate this to us?” Zayas questioned. “They are medical professionals, and they must have known.”
Despite claims that Casalaspro was not abusive, Zayas admitted her son had been violent in the past, including an incident on her birthday when he had assaulted her over a simple request to clean the kitchen.
Damien’s mental health struggles began at the young age of six, following his father’s imprisonment, Zayas recalled. He began experiencing hallucinations at 13, following a traumatic incident involving sexual abuse by a school peer, she noted, though she declined to elaborate further.
He was later diagnosed with PTSD and major depressive disorder. Zayas described how her son would see “shadow figures and disturbing images, almost like scenes from horror films,” which he would illustrate for her.
That’s when he was initially prescribed antipsychotic medications.
Damien had also attempted suicide twice and had been hospitalized on two occasions but had stabilized on his medications by age 14, according to Zayas.
“I’m devastated,” she expressed. “My son wasn’t like this before; he was a good kid. Something is seriously off with him.”
Throughout high school, she managed to stay informed about his medical care. However, despite her efforts, her involvement drastically decreased once he graduated in January and entered an adult mental health program.
She attended his first couple of appointments, but then he told her she could no longer accompany him.
“I didn’t even know which doctors he was seeing,” the worried mother said. “I questioned whether he was attending his appointments. Every day, I reminded him to take his medication, and he said he was doing so.”
“We urge the public to reserve judgment,” stated Gelormino. “Damien Hurstel is an extremely troubled young man with a long history of documented mental health issues. Our firm is diligently working to obtain his psychiatric history to fully understand the events leading to this tragedy.”
Meanwhile, Zayas and Casalaspro, a city sanitation worker, were in the midst of purchasing a new home nearby.
“I’m heartbroken,” Zayas lamented. “Anthony was a wonderful person, stepping up to help raise my children. He didn’t have to do that.”
