A man who fatally stabbed his brother-in-law in the victim’s Yonkers apartment was convicted of second-degree murder as the jury rejected his insistence that he was defending himself after getting stabbed first.
John Singh, 55, was found guilty Friday, June 5, in the 2024 killing of 78-year-old Bernard Barua. Jurors deliberated for just three hours following a two-week trial in Westchester County Court.
In the early afternoon of Nov. 16, 2024, Singh called 911 to report he had been stabbed in the 2nd floor apartment where he was living with his sister and Barua. They had set up a small area in the living room for Singh months earlier after he’d gotten thrown out of his mother’s home. He eventually told the dispatcher that Barua had also been stabbed and when she asked by who, said ‘Me’.
When police and paramedics arrived Barua was found unconscious in his blood-soaked bed. Life saving efforts failed and he was taken to a hospital where he was pronounced dead. An autopsy determined he had suffered a 4-inch stab wound that pierced his aorta.
There was little offered to suggest a motive but prosecutors Lana Hochheiser and Brianna Ciuffi maintained that Singh stabbed Barua as the victim lay in bed, then waited to call 911 while he cleaned up and stabbed himself in the chest with the same knife so that he could claim to have been the victim of an attack by Barua.
That’s what Singh told jurors when he testified, saying an agitated Barua emerged from the bedroom, began talking to him about his wife wanting him to get a job and then suddenly stabbed him. He said they then struggled over the knife before Barua let go and ran back into the bedroom. Singh said he assumed Barua had been wounded but denied that he stabbed him, saying that whatever happened was a result of their struggling over the knife.
Singh conceded that the knife was his but he claimed Barua had it in the weeks before the stabbing and that he was unaware where it was until Barua attacked him with it.
But while he testified to having been dizzy, out of breath and suffering intense pain – and going from victim to villain in his treatment by police – footage from police body-worn cameras showed a shirtless, handcuffed Singh in the hallway displaying none of those symptoms. Still, Singh was hospitalized with a stab wound to his chest that nicked his heart and just missed a key artery.
In closing arguments Thursday, Hochheiser urged jurors to rely on the crime scene evidence to find that Barua had been stabbed in his bed and not in the living room like Singh claimed. She pointed to the lack of any disturbance in that room and the fact that there was no blood there when there should have been if such a violent stabbing had occurred at that spot.
Defense lawyers Richard Ferrante and Daniel Harnick relied on a blood spatter consultant, retired Connecticut state Police Lt. Col. Mark Davison, who opined that Barua was likely killed while standing up and that fibers from Singh’s shirt got onto Barua’s shirt via the knife after Singh was stabbed.
Ferrante said they would appeal.
“While we respect the jury’s verdict we continue to maintain there was more than sufficient reasonable doubt presented at the trial,” he said.
Westchester District Attorney Susan Cacace praised the jury “thoughtful examination” of the case.
“Bernard Barua’s life mattered,” she said in a statement. “When the defendant stabbed him to death, he forever changed the course of both of their lives. Today, Mr. Singh was finally held accountable for his depraved conduct, and we will seek to ensure that he spends decades in prison.”
Singh was also convicted of first-degree manslaughter and faces a minimum of 15 years to life in prison and a maximum of 25 years to life in the murder charge. He was returned to the county jail for sentencing, which Westchester Judge Maurice Dean Williams scheduled for July 17.
This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: Guilty verdict for man who fatally stabbed brother-in-law in Yonkers
Reporting by Jonathan Bandler, Rockland/Westchester Journal News / Rockland/Westchester Journal News
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By Jonathan Bandler, Rockland/Westchester Journal News | USA TODAY Network
