If you were about to learn your fate, I bet you would be on the edge your seat. And one man was about to learn if he was going to spend the rest of his life in jail or not. Instead of sitting at the edge of his seat, he fell asleep. Last month Daniel St Hubert had been convicted of stabbing a little boy to death. And now he didn’t care to hear how long he’d be in jail for his murder sentence. At least the little boy got justice.
When Hubert killed Prince Joshua “PJ” Avitto, he was just six years old. The murder occurred in 2014 when the pair were in an elevator together.
Hubert, who hails from Brooklyn, stabbed PJ eleven times in the brutal attack. But he also turned the knife on the little boy’s friend, seven-year-old Mikayla. She was stabbed sixteen times but survived. She is eleven now.
Hubert was a homeless man living on the streets of New York when he stabbed the little boy. And during his sentencing, he learned that he would be spending 50 years in prison.
Right now Hubert is thirty-one.
District Attorney Gonzalez described Hubert’s murder as “unspeakable.”
The D.A. said, “This defendant committed an unspeakable crime when he attacked two defenseless young children for no reason, killing one and leaving the other seriously injured.”
Gonzalez knows that with Hubert in prison for second-degree murder, he won’t be able to hurt any more innocent people.
“I know that PJ’s loved ones will never be consoled and that Mikayla, whose courageous testimony helped to obtain this conviction, will forever carry this tragedy with her. But I hope that they will find some solace by knowing that justice was done.”
Back on June 1, 2014, PJ and Mikayla were playing tag in the playground behind their housing development in East New York. When the children asked permission to go up to PJ’s home at around 5:40 pm, the two children entered the elevator. Hubert snuck into it with them.
With no reason, Hubert withdrew his knife and repeatedly stabbed and lacerated PJ and Mikayla with a steak knife.
Somehow Mikayla survived sixteen stab wounds. She crawled to the building’s entrance to get help.
A witness saw Hubert enter the elevator and leave the building shortly after. Two more witnesses saw him fleeing the building and then falling into a grassy area beyond the building. Police found the blood-stained steak knife in the grassy area where he fell.
DNA analysis matched Mikayla and PJ. But there was also DNA on the handle and it matched Hubert’s.
When he was arrested, Hubert told police, “Satan has powers and controls things.”
He was found fit to stand trial this January.
During the sentencing, Mikayla said, “I try not to remember this bad man and what he did to me and PJ.”
During the sentencing, Hubert was letting his defense attorney Jonathan Rosenberg do all the work. While the judge announced his fate, Hubert sat back in his chair, closed his eyes and went to sleep. His mouth fell open in sleep.
