What to Know
- Horrifying surveillance video shows a man stab a woman with a screwdriver repeatedly in a Manhattan barber shop
- It happened Thursday in Hamilton Heights
- Police say the suspect and victim were husband and wife; the man has been arrested
A man has been charged in the vicious screwdriver attack on his 38-year-old wife as she quietly sat on a bench at a Manhattan barber shop last week, police said Monday.
Police initially told News 4 the man has been charged with murder and the woman died. But a good Samaritan who tried to save her said he visited her in the hospital Monday and she was alive, but in terrible shape.
Police later clarified Monday night that the alleged attacker, 66-year-old Jose Castillo, was charged with one count of attempted murder and one count of criminal possession of a weapon.
Police said Castillo stabbed his wife five times. It's not clear when he was taken into custody, and a motive wasn't immediately available, either.
The Thursday attack and its aftermath were caught on surveillance footage too disturbing for NBC 4 New York to show in raw form. The video shows the man in a black jacket approach the woman as she sits on a bench in the Hamilton Heights shop, then violently attack her. He stabs her repeatedly before at least one other person rushes in and tries to stop him. That person and the suspect wrestle with the screwdriver.
The struggle takes them to one side of the shop, then another, where they crash into a large storage bin that then tumbles to the floor.
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The woman, who had been crouched down and hiding, makes a run for it -- racing up the stairs, where video then shows her trying to get out of the shop and onto the street. The suspect drags her back in. They struggle.
Then the man who had tried to wrestle away the screwdriver comes into view and tries again to pull the suspect away. He gets the woman onto the street, but the attacker has her gripped with one hand, and proceeds to stab her with the screw driver on the sidewalk. After, he runs off.
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The woman tries to get up and go back inside as the man who had tried to help her returns. She collapses on the ground just outside the door.
