This is the 18-year-old girl beaten to death by her stepfather last week – after she accused him of sexually abusing her.
Jean Simon, 54, was charged on Friday with killing Lakeshia Seymour in a fit of rage after she reportedly confided to a friend about the allegations.
Relatives said she was eager to study nursing at Columbia University in the autumn but the brutal murder has sadly torn her family apart.
Police said Simon chased the high school graduate to the porch of their second-floor apartment at approximately 2:30pm on Thursday.
There, he bludgeoned her to death with a hammer and left her lifeless body.
Simon then fled in his Mercedes-Benz, but flipped the car 30 minuted later as he sped toward the Jackie Robinson Parkway in Queens.
When a passerby stopped to see if he was hurt, Simon pulled out a knife and fled towards a nearby cemetery.
Officers, who were combing the wooded areas nearby, spotted the fugitive hiding in bushes and arrested him.
Simon confessed to the murder, but told detectives he acted out of blind rage because Lakeshia’s accusation was untrue.
Police said the incident was ‘brutal and savage’.
A relative, who did not wish to be named, told the New York Daily News: ‘I saw him beating Keisha on the head with a big boot. She tried to hide under a chair on the landing.’
