A Manhattan man who stabbed his grandmother to death with a faux elephant tusk was sentenced to 20 years behind bars Thursday.
Dominick Anderson attacked his 62-year-old granny — jabbing the tusk straight through one cheek and right out the other — because he thought she was trying to cast a voodoo curse on him, prosecutors said.
“I saw her laying on the ground, and he had the elephant tusk in his hand, and at that moment I didn’t care if I lived or died,” Anderson’s sister, Simone, told the court in her impact statement before dissolving into tears.”I just wanted her to survive.”
Anderson descended on his petite grandmother, Beverly Holmes, in their Hamilton Heights apartment Dec. 19, 2012, under the paranoid delusion she was attempting to cast a curse on him.
Simone said she didn’t see her brother as a “monster” but suffered “flashbacks and nightmares” from the bloody brawl that almost claimed her own life as well, when her brother nearly killed her, too, as she tried to intervene.
“No, I don’t hate him. How can you hate someone who you looked up to as a father figure?” she whimpered.
Prosecutor Karen Edelman-Reyes said the 32-year-old man had previously suffered delusions, frequently neglected his medication and had been under the impression his family intended to dismember him before he killed his gradmother with the fake tusk.
“Beverly suffered a stab wound that transected her entire face,” piercing one cheek and exiting the other, Edelman-Reyes told the court, saying the force of the blow shattered her facial bones and would have been “unsurvivable at any age.” She was also stabbed in the neck, arms, and legs.
Simone, who sat in the pews sobbing after she addressed Manhattan supreme court Judge Maxwell Wiley, survived stab wounds to the face, arms, hands, and legs.
Anderson pleaded guilty to one count of second-degree manslaughter and one count of second-degree assault in September in exchange for the 20-year sentence. He was also sentenced Thursday to 15 years in prison on the assault charge, which he’ll serve at the same time.
“My heart goes out to Ms. Anderson and Mr. Anderson’s family,” Judge Wiley said before imposing sentence. “I hope today’s proceedings have brought you some solace.”
As Anderson was cuffed and led out of the courtroom, Simone sobbed, “I love you, Dominick.”
“I love you,” he responded as he disappeared through the door.