Mourners packed a Brooklyn funeral home on Saturday afternoon to say final goodbyes to 19-year-old Samyia Spain who was fatally stabbed, with her twin sister wounded, outside a deli after she rejected a man’s advances.
More than four hundred people filled the Frank R. Bell Funeral Home on Sterling Place near Classon Ave. in Crown Heights for Spain’s funeral service.
“To have a young lady killed just for refusing someone’s attention — that’s a hard one to swallow,” said Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, who attended the service. “I’m hoping we can really take some time to look at what we’re doing and what we need to be doing, because Samyia should be here … I have daughters so it always hits a lot different.”
Williams said he spoke to the girl’s grieving parents, offering them “prayers, tools and comfort.”
“… they just want their daughter back,” Williams said.
Mourners shed tears, prayed and sang while photos of Spain in happier times flashed on several TV screens. Some loved ones wore t-shirts and hooded sweatshirts with Spain’s portrait on the front.
Lee Bozier, who drove the victim’s twin sister to the service, said he had trouble accepting the senseless motive for Spain’s slaying.
“When a female says, ‘No’, that means no. Just let it go,” said Bozier, 52. “I don’t know why he tried to attack a female. That’s being a coward. He’s going to pay with consequences for what he did.”
“She’s taking it real hard,” Bozier said of the surviving twin, Sanyia, who also got knifed in the March 17 attack.
A flower arrangement near Spain’s casket spelled the word “Twin.”
Spain and her sister Sanyia took a break from a family game night to grab snacks at Natural Plus deli on Fourth Ave. and St. Marks Place in Park Slope when a man began chatting them up at about 2:20 a.m., cops said.
“He was very aggressive to one of the girls, trying to get her contact information,” NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny previously said of the accused killer, 20-year-old Veo Kelly.
When Spain didn’t take to Kelly’s advances, the sisters argued with him before things turned physical, Kenny said.
“He had a knife in his hand and was saying, ‘I’m gonna stab y’all in the face,’” Sanyia previously told The News. “I’m telling everyone to back up. And he pushed little Samyia to the ground.”
When it appeared Kelly was going to charge toward Samyia, the twins’ older brother stepped in and punched him, sending him to the ground as the group started brawling.
“As I was going to grab [Samyia’s phone], he stabbed me in my arm,” Sanyia said of Kelly. “Samyia then asked him to give her the phone back, and he stabbed her in the neck.”
Samyia was stabbed in the chest, cops said. Medics rushed the sisters to New York-Presbyterian Brooklyn Methodist Hospital, but Samyia could not be saved.
Five days after the deadly attack Kelly turned himself in to cops with his attorney at Brooklyn Criminal Court. A judge held him without bail on charges including murder, assault, and criminal possession of a weapon.
Kelly is set to return to court Monday, records show.
