A crazed homeless criminal lurking outside a Queens woman’s house beat and stomped to death a protective neighbor who had come to her aid, police said yesterday.
Nicholas Nowillo, 66, was killed after Michelle Koutsouvelis, 41, called him to ask for an escort from her car to her door because the vagrant scared her.
“I asked him to watch me get into my home, and the next thing I know, the guy’s attacking him,” said Koutsouvelis, a dance-studio owner who lives in Astoria. “It happened so fast.
“He was like my second father, a great soul that was always looking out for me. He was attacked for nothing, and it’s heartbreaking.”
Eric Cherry, 43, was arrested near the scene shortly after the killing at 10:45 p.m. Wednesday. He is expected to be charged today, sources said.
Cherry has 10 prior arrests, mostly for drug possession.
He was paroled on July 23 after spending six days in jail on a drug charge, according to Correction Department records.
Cherry was re-arrested Aug. 20 on another drug case – a parole violation – yet somehow managed to get released without posting bail on Aug. 25, nine days before the killing. “Why was he out? I have no idea,” said a Queens DA spokesman.
Cherry told cops he had been staying at a Long Island City shelter for homeless veterans – which Department of Homeless Service police raided in a drug search Wednesday night.
Residents there said Cherry, who they thought had served in Iraq, suffered from posttraumatic stress disorder and was freaked out by the raid.
“Some guys, they think they’re still in the field, they think they’re threatened, they lash out,” said Steven Petho, 60.
“He had anger issues,” said Previn Sanders, 38.
“He had a short fuse and I can see how [the raid] would affect him more than others.”
A DHS spokeswoman confirmed the search. She said seven people were thrown out.
But she said Cherry, who is from Hawaii, has not been registered with the department since earlier this year. She said it’s possible he used a different name.
Nowillo, a retired jeweler and father of two, had moved to New York from Ecuador 50 years ago and had served in the US Army.
He had recently been devastated by the death of his 3-year-old granddaughter, Zara, who caught the flu in February.
One of his daughters, Doris Nowillo-Suda, 39, was inside the house when her dad was killed.
“One of my kids said to me, ‘Mommy, there’s a fight outside,’ and I came out to see my father on the floor,” she said.
Additional reporting by John Doyle