Lawyers in Brooklyn stabber trial agree 11-year-old victim gave false testimony

March 22, 2018 By Paul Frangipane Brooklyn Daily Eagle

Daniel St. Hubert is on trial for allegedly stabbing two children in an East New York public housing elevator. Eagle file photo by Paul Frangipane

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An 11-year-old girl, who was nearly stabbed to death in an elevator, testified for two days during her accused attacker’s trial in Brooklyn Supreme Court this week only to have lawyers from both sides agree that at least part of her statements were false.

Nearly four years after Mikayla Capers was stabbed 16 times and her friend P.J. Avitto, 6, was fatally stabbed 11 times inside an East New York public housing elevator, she testified that she identified Daniel St. Hubert to police before the trial.

However, prosecutors said during the trial’s opening arguments that Capers had never identified St. Hubert, 30, before the trial. Capers then endured hours of questioning from defense attorney Howard Greenberg during which he repeatedly told her that the identification never happened.

After Capers finished testifying, Greenberg read a stipulation to the jurors that the identification Capers claimed, was false.

“Did you see his picture in the hospital four weeks after you got hurt?” Greenberg asked Capers.

“Yes,” she responded.

“You’re making that up too, aren’t you?” Greenberg countered.

The 6th grader quickly said no.

Greenberg has been attacking Capers’ credibility since the start of the trial when he called her a “pathological liar.” The attorney insists that St. Hubert was not the killer in the June 1, 2014 stabbing.

On Tuesday, Capers described the summer day at the Boulevard Houses where she, then 7 years old, and Avitto lived. When the two children went into the elevator of Avitto’s building to grab ICEEs upstairs, St. Hubert allegedly followed them in wielding a steak knife.

“He told us to shut up,” Capers previously said. “He started repeatedly stabbing us.”

While Avitto bled out in the elevator from his injures, Capers survived after treatment at Brookdale Hospital and eventually New York Presbyterian.

After fleeing the scene and allegedly dropping the bloody knife on the way out, St. Hubert was arrested four days later when his DNA was found on the murder weapon.

When Capers’ testimony finished, a black one-size-fits-all hat was submitted into evidence and shown to the jury. A now-retired NYPD detective previously testified that the hat was found in the elevator next to a pool of blood, but it was never tested for DNA.

Charged with second-degree murder, attempted murder, assault and weapon possession, St. Hubert faces up to 50 years to life in prison if convicted.

Testimony was scheduled to continue Thursday afternoon.