By Joe Whalen
A Queens Village man plagued by years of mental illness confessed to suffocating his mother in their home Monday because he believed she was trying to poison him, police said.
After killing his mother, Robert Jean-Lord, 24, stabbed himself twice in the chest with a kitchen knife in a failed suicide attempt, authorities said.
Police arrived on the scene shortly after 11 a.m. Monday and found the victim, Mariella Jean-Lord, 52, on the floor of a bathroom in her single-family home at 92-35 216th St. Her son, who has been charged with second-degree murder, was taken to Mary Immaculate Hospital in Jamaica for evaluation. He was reported in stable condition.
The victim’s younger sister, Marie Souffrant-Santiago, said her nephew suffered from depression and that his mother “wanted to put him in a psychiatric ward.”
A neighbor who asked to remain anonymous said the arrival of police cars, fire trucks and ambulances briefly closed down the street. She added that the victim’s son was walking but needed help descending the steps before being placed on a gurney.
“He was sitting on the stoop and they were giving him oxygen,” the 74-year-old woman said of Robert Jean-Lord. “They took him away in an ambulance.”
She said the victim’s son and his younger sister, Jessica, also in her 20s, were “very nice children” who attended Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic School.
“It’s a shock,” she said. “I can’t believe that he did it. He must have been sick or something to do that.”
Police said there was no history of domestic violence reported at the house, but neighbors said authorities had been called to the home at least twice in the past several years.
“This is not the first time they were called, I know that,” said Gloria Fernandez, a 39-year-old nursing attendant who has lived on the block since 1996. “But it’s never been like this.”
Gladys and Roberto Marroquin, 21-year residents of the block, said police sedated the troubled man about 15 months ago.
“What I heard was that he wanted to kill himself,” Gladys Marroquin said of Robert Jean-Lord. “They sent a unit to stun him with drugs, and then they took him out of the house. The mother told me he was on medication.”
The victim’s husband, Robert Jean-Lord Sr., died Feb. 6, 1997 after suffering an aneurysm while driving on the Long Island Expressway.
“The kid took it very badly when his father died,” Roberto Marroquin said. “I think that’s when his problems really started.”
Several other neighbors characterized the block as a quiet place where families and children live without fear of serious crime.
“I’m surprised something like this happened here,” said Vee Persaud. “It happened right on our block, so close, and without anyone knowing anything.”
As detectives from the 105th Precinct investigated the homicide, the victim’s sister wept in the arms of her niece, Emmanuella Souffrant, and held a Bible in her right hand.
“She [was] a nice woman, a caring mother,” Souffrant-Santiago said of her sister.
Reach reporter Joe Whalen by e-mail at Timesledger@aol.com or call 229-0300, Ext. 146.
