A husband and wife who owned a store that sells religious articles were stabbed to death by a masked attacker outside their Brooklyn home Wednesday, police said.
The couple was returning home from work and approaching the front door of their home on Winthrop Street in Prospect-Lefferts Gardens when the knife-wielding attacker stabbed them both in the neck, law-enforcement sources said.
Stephenson Bonaparte, 65, collapsed in the front yard and his 59-year-old wife, Hazel Brown, made it inside, where their adult daughter called 911 and saw the killer flee, sources said.
Brown was pronounced dead at the scene at 6:48 p.m. and Bonaparte died at Kings County Hospital at 7:03 p.m.
There was no immediate arrest.
The couple’s next-door neighbor said the adult daughter, cradling her 2-year-old child, frantically knocked on his door just after the attack.
“She ran . . . straight to my house. She was shaking. She said she heard her mom screaming and saw her father outside,” the neighbor said. “They put the father in the ambulance but the mom was still in the house when I came out. You can tell it wasn’t good.”
The couple owned the King Soloman Religious store on Rutland Road.
“Goddamn! Why would anyone want to do that?” said Mohammed Rashed, 29, a clerk at Sam’s Deli a few doors down from the store. “He was a gentleman — I remember he was always drinking peppermint tea.”
The couple originally hailed from Trinidad.
They lived with their adult daughter, her boyfriend and her 2-year-old child, according to the couple’s horrified neighbors.
“I can’t believe someone would just do that. It doesn’t make sense,” said a nearby store owner. “I’m in shock and sad that her daughter and granddaughter had to see everything. She was crying uncontrollably.”
Bonaparte — whom neighbors affectionately called “Pastor Steve” — and Brown had been grocery shopping before the murders, another neighbor said. A bottle of orange juice and other groceries were spilled in the front yard.
“This is unbelievable! This has never happened before. This is a very stable family community where the homeowners have been here for generations,” said the neighbor. “I’m shocked. I’m stressed out.”
There was no immediate arrest and cops didn’t reveal a motive, although detectives were looking into an argument the couple had with a customer earlier in the day.
Additional reporting by Shari Logan, Alex Taylor and David K. Li