SI Teen’s Chilling Question to Sister After Allegedly Beheading Mom’s Boyfriend: ‘Do You Want Her to Live?’

The Staten Island teen accused of beheading his mother’s boyfriend allegedly showed his younger sister the mutilated body — then asked if she wanted their mother to live.

“She said, ‘Are you gonna hurt Mom?’” recalled their mother, 39-year-old Alicia Zayas, describing the horror her daughter, 16-year-old Bri, witnessed in their West Brighton apartment Monday morning.

“And he said, ‘Do you want her to live?’” Zayas told The Post in an exclusive interview Friday. “She said, ‘Yes, please.’ He said, ‘Okay, she’ll live.’”

Bri then asked if she could leave the blood-soaked bathroom where, according to police sources, her brother, 19-year-old Damien Hurstel, had just decapitated 45-year-old Anthony Casalaspro — Zayas’ live-in boyfriend — and removed part of his brain with a spoon.

“Are you gonna tell Mom?” Hurstel allegedly asked her.
“No,” Bri replied.

Moments later, Bri fled to the backyard, hid behind a shed, and called her mother.

“She called me scared,” Zayas said through tears. “I could hear it in her voice. I said, ‘Are you somewhere safe?’ She said, ‘Damien killed Anthony, and he doesn’t have a head.’”

Police said Hurstel confessed to stabbing Casalaspro and sawing off his head inside the family’s Cary Avenue apartment. He faces charges of second-degree murder, manslaughter, and criminal possession of a weapon.

A gruesome crime scene photo showed Casalaspro’s severed head lying beside his shirtless body in a walk-in shower, wearing only red briefs. A plastic ladle was found on his chest and a spoon protruded from his skull.

Zayas raced home and told Bri, “If you don’t hear from me in two minutes, call 911.”

Inside, she found blood everywhere. Her son was in the kitchen, expressionless.
“His eyes looked different,” she said. “Normally they’re light — this time, they looked dark. I said, ‘Damien, what’s going on? What’s wrong, honey?’ He said, ‘Cleaning,’ like it was normal.”

When she asked where Casalaspro was, he told her he was in the bathroom — then warned, “You don’t want to go in there.”

“I said, ‘Damien, I have to see Anthony,’” she recalled. She moved slowly toward the bathroom, afraid to turn her back to him.

“I saw everything. I started screaming, ‘Why? Why? He loved you! Why would you do this?’”

She called 911: “Come quick. My son killed my boyfriend.”
When the dispatcher asked how she knew the man was dead, Zayas replied, “He has no head.”

Police arrived moments later as Zayas begged them not to hurt her son.

Zayas insists the tragedy was preventable, blaming the mental health system for failing her son. She said doctors changed his psychiatric medications in January without notifying her — only a CVS pharmacist told her that Damien had been taken off the antipsychotic Depakote too abruptly.

She never learned what replaced it. Because her son had turned 18, his psychiatrist refused to share details.

“Why wouldn’t they tell us?” she asked. “They’re doctors. They knew what could happen.”

Zayas said Casalaspro was not abusive but admitted Damien had a violent history. He attacked her last year on her birthday when she asked him to clean the kitchen.

Damien’s struggles began early. His father went to prison when he was six, and he began hallucinating at 13 after being sexually assaulted by another student in Queens, Zayas said. He was later diagnosed with PTSD and major depression.

“He saw shadow figures — terrifying things, like horror movies,” she said. “He would draw them for me.”

After two suicide attempts and hospitalizations, he stabilized at 14 while on medication. But once he entered an adult mental health program, Zayas said she was cut out.

“I didn’t even know what doctors he was seeing anymore,” she said. “Every morning I reminded him to take his medication. He told me he was taking it.”

Defense attorney Louis Gelormino said the case must be viewed through the lens of Damien’s long mental health history.

“Damien Hurstel is an extremely troubled young man with documented psychiatric issues,” Gelormino said. “We’re pursuing his complete psychiatric history to understand what led to this tragedy.”

Zayas described Casalaspro, a city Sanitation worker, as a devoted partner and father figure.

“I’m heartbroken,” she said. “Anthony was a great man. He was helping me raise my kids. He didn’t have to do that.”