DAILY NEWS WRITERS
Courtesy of the New York Daily News
The machete-wielding Queens madman who slashed a stranger and tossed Molotov cocktails at cops from his roof is a schizophrenic who was off his meds, his family said Wednesday.
“He’s crazy,” said a man who identified himself as Felipe Velasquez’s uncle. “He just went wild, you know, because he didn’t take his medications.”
He said his nephew recently spent a month at Elmhurst Hospital Center and was diagnosed with mental illness.
In his Tuesday night rampage, Velasquez hit Bernard Hoffman, 45, in the head with a machete in front of the Richmond Hill home Velasquez shares with his uncle.
Hoffman fended off his attacker with his umbrella, disarmed him, grabbed the weapon and called cops. Velasquez then climbed onto his roof and threw the handmade combustibles, hitting an unmarked police car that erupted in flames.
The 90-minute standoff ended when cops persuaded Velasquez to come down. Hoffman was taken to New York Hospital Medical Center of Queens for a cut on his head and was released yesterday.
“We’re happy to God he’s alive,” Hoffman’s mother, Beatrice, said. She said her son had a “cane-style” umbrella with a big handle on it.
Some of Velasquez’s neighbors said they thought they were being attacked by terrorists when a phalanx of cops converged on the block. “When I came outside, the cops pushed me inside,” Jeffrey Disoa, 17, said. “I thought it was a terrorist threat.”
Paul Samaroo, 48, said cops forced him to evacuate with his wife and three children – 17, 12 and 8 months. When he was permitted to return, he found that cops had broken his door and window to get to the roof.
“My house is a mess,” he said.
