A jealous boyfriend fatally stabbed a young mother and two of her baby daughters on Wednesday inside a Staten Island hotel where the city’s homeless services recently placed the family, cops said.
A third daughter, Miracle, 2, also was stabbed, but survived the 8:50 a.m. carnage at the Ramada Inn on North Gannon Avenue in Willowbrook.
The alleged killer, Michael “Skyes” Sykes, 23, dumped the bloody kitchen knife about a block from the hotel and was last seen boarding a Staten Island Ferry boat at around 9:30 a.m., sources told The Post.
A short time later, housekeepers discovered the massacre at the 64-unit hotel, where half of the rooms are used by the Department of Homeless Services as housing for homeless families and staffers.
The mother, Rebecca Cutler, 26, lay dead on the carpet just inside the doorway, one housekeeper told The Post of the horrific scene inside.
Little Miracle “was trying to cry” on one of the two beds, the housekeeper said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
“She was still moving around, making little sounds.”
The two younger children lay dying. A 5-month-old infant, Maiyah Sykes — the suspect’s own daughter, who was seen on hallway video surveillance bouncing on her dad’s hips just moments before — was crying, although “not very loud,” the housekeeper said. “Just an irritated type of cry.”
Ziana Cutler, 1, was on the second bed, the housekeeper said.
Sykes, of Brooklyn, suspected Cutler was cheating on him with one of the children’s fathers, according to sources. He confronted her on Tuesday and allegedly stole her cellphone. Cutler filed a police report about the theft, sources said.
On Wednesday, Cutler, Sykes and the three children went to a nearby deli on Victory Boulevard at around 7:30 a.m. They returned to the hotel at around 8 a.m., but Sykes stayed in the hallway, said Chief of Detectives Robert Boyce.
“We find him going in the room at 8:50 a.m. and he leaves four minutes later,” said Boyce. “We believe that’s when the attack happened.”
Sykes allegedly stabbed Cutler more than two dozen times.
Miracle was in critical but stable condition at Richmond University Medical Center.
Visitors are not allowed beyond the lobby, the housekeeper said. But in the minutes before the massacre, a Department of Homeless Services supervisor repeatedly approached Sykes as he stood outside Cutler’s room, holding the baby on his hip, the housekeeper said.
The supervisor even asked him “if everything was all right,” the housekeeper said, citing hallway surveillance video she said she had viewed with management.
A DHS spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment.
After the murders, Sykes, who has no prior arrests, called his mother and confessed that he killed his girlfriend and was going to commit suicide, sources said.
Mayor de Blasio called the stabbings “an atrocious crime.”
“As a parent there’s nothing more horrible than the loss of a child and there’s nothing more horrible than the notion of an adult who would attack a child,” de Blasio said, adding that “the family has gone through an unspeakable tragedy.”
De Blasio said that all 28 remaining families housed at the hotel will be relocated immediately and the hotel’s use as a homeless shelter will be discontinued.
Cutler, who friends say was unemployed, and her three children had been staying at the hotel since Dec. 6, 2015 in lieu of traditional shelter, officials said.
Sykes is the father of the youngest child, Maiyah and there are photos of her on his Facebook page. About a year ago Sykes worked as a store clerk for a Duane Reade for about 16 months, a store spokesman confirmed.
In an exchange on Cutler’s Facebook page, Sykes and Cutler shared a loving series of comments back last February.
“I will always love you no matter what pudding pop,” Sykes wrote as a comment on a photo of Cutler. Cutler replied, “Likewise baby, and u know that u my everything.”
On Facebook, the two listed that they were married on July 12, 2015.
Cutler was not a known domestic violence victim to authorities, he said.
A shelter resident at the hotel who was friends with Cutler told detectives that she saw Sykes aboard an S62 bus during that time frame as she was on her way to work.
“I was on the bus with him this morning. He was just as calm as could be. You would never think he could do that,” said the 25-year-old woman who would only identify herself as Renee.
She added that Sykes, who she says had visited Cutler at the hotel frequently, hopped off the bus on Jewett Avenue.
Residents at the shelter said that the environment is seedy with little to no security.
“I don’t think it’s a good environment for my kid,” said Rashon Jones, 21, who has been living out of the hotel for about a month with his family. He was placed there by the Department of Homeless Services.
“This is crazy, outrageous, to wake up to this. I feel very, very, very unsafe. I have two kids,” said Jones who wants to be transferred out of the hotel immediately.
Jones added that just one security guard patrols the hotel grounds.
De Blasio said that the hotel only had overnight security and not day security, but said that as a result of this slaughtering all 41 citywide hotels that are run as homeless shelters will be offered security contracted through the Department of Homeless Services starting Thursday.
https://twitter.com/NYPDnews/status/697467576612425728/photo/1
He added that “our goal is to no longer use those hotels.”
The Ramada Inn has been used as a homeless shelter since August 2015 and officials say that there have been “no other instances of violence.”
Jonathon Sweeting, 20, who has lived at the hotel for the past two weeks said that Cutler was a “loving mother.”
“She was always with her daughters. She was always carrying the youngest ones,” he said.
“They are so cute and funny. I’ll never forget those little girls.”
Hotel resident Shaquai Williams, 25, said that Cutler used to babysit her kids.
“She was a good mother,” she said.
Former City Council speaker Christine Quinn who now heads Win – a non-profit serving homeless women and children said, “Homeless woman and children are among our most vulnerable New Yorkers and it’s incumbent upon us as a city to finally do better by them.”
Comptroller Scott Stringer said, “It is our responsibility to guarantee the safety of homeless individuals under our care.”
“Today, I am calling on the Administration to conduct a swift and comprehensive review of all commercial hotels being used to house the homeless and provide a complete accounting of exactly what they intend to do to ensure these sites are sufficiently protected. Resources must be added immediately to any areas where shortcomings are found.”
Additional reporting by Daniel Prendergast, Tina Moore, Kenneth Garger and Sophia Rosenbaum