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An anguished mom whose Army vet son was murdered in 2018 broke down in a Manhattan courtroom as video of the crime was shown in an attempt to get one of the alleged attackers out on bail.
Madeline Brame, whose 35-year-old son Hason Correa was stabbed to death in Harlem, clutched her chest as she saw her son walking around in the black-and-white surveillance footage.
“And you want to let him out,” Brame shouted during the bail hearing Friday for defendant Travis Stewart in Manhattan Supreme Court.
The wailing Brame began to collapse in tears, as court officers held her up and then escorted her out to compose herself. She later said she felt as if her heart was going to stop.
Toni Messina, a lawyer for Stewart, presented the video in an bid to demonstrate her client was “not involved in the way” that was presented to the grand jury.
Stewart is charged with murder, attempted murder, gang assault and assault. He has been in jail without bail since his 2018 arrest. This was the fourth hearing attempting to get him released.
He is one of four people charged in the Oct. 19, 2018, attack on Correa and his father, Wesley, in the lobby of a Harlem apartment building.
The fatal encounter apparently unfolded after the father and son got in a fight with someone else in the building.
Correa, a married father of three who had done a tour in Afghanistan, was stabbed in the heart. His father was seriously injured.
Messina tried to portray her client has as a hard-working member of the community who was not a flight risk.
Assistant District Attorney Keith Savino said Stewart has a gang affiliation, and a previous violent felony arrest in which he pulled a gun on a victim.
Judge Ellen Biben ordered Stewart back to jail without bail.
Biben in 2019 had drastically reduced bail to $12,000 for another defendant in the case, Mary Saunders, and she has since been released.
A trial in the case has been delayed because of COVID-19 safety protocols.
Brame, 59, said she was glad Biben kept Stewart in jail, but that the hearing was an emotional drain.
“It’s tormenting and tortuous to have to sit through this over and over and over again,” she said after the hearing. “I’m ready for this to go to trial and to get over with. Four years. Enough is enough.”
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