Mentally-ill Bronx dad stabs self to death as horrified son calls police

Jun. 25--A tense father-son standoff in the Bronx ended with the mentally-ill dad stabbing himself to death while his horrified son called 911, officials said Tuesday.

The son's panicked pleas for help brought cops to the apartment on Metropolitan Ave. near Maple Drive in Parkchester about 2 p.m. Monday.

When officers arrived, the 46-year-old father was dead of several stab wounds. His name was not immediately released.

The 20-year-old son was found in a back bedroom. He called 911.

"The father suffers from schizophrenia. The son called the police. The father attacked him. He ran to his room and locked the door," said neighbor Mercedes Taveras, 57.

The dead man's wife came home up in the middle of the confrontation, Taveras said.

"The mother said to me, 'I'm so embarrassed. My son is upstairs,'" Taveras said.

The son, had to be pulled out of his bedroom window. "They handcuffed him immediately and put him in a car," said Taveras.

While investigators first suspected the son had stabbed his father, cops now believe that the father's stab wounds were self-inflicted.

"We don't believe there is any criminality on the part of the son," an NYPD source said.

Unaware he was dead inside, the mother told police she was going to leave her husband, then asked the officers, "Why did you handcuff my son? My child is a good kid," Taveras recounted.

The city medical examiner's office will determine the father's official cause of death, cops said.

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