An out-of-work former MTA bus driver plunged a kitchen knife into his wife’s chest as she lay in bed Sunday morning — then jumped to his death from the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge, neighbors and authorities said.
The Staten Island couple’s children — a 9-year-old girl and 14- and 15-year-old boys — were home at the time, and one of them called 911, authorities said.
Police said abusive, pill-popping dad Brian Helfer, 47, first stabbed his spouse, Maggie, 51, twice around 8:35 a.m. in the home, which is on a quiet, tree-lined cul-de-sac in the Bulls Head section.
But by the time the kids called 911, their dad had sped away in a silver 2013 Hyundai Genesis.
Helfer drove to the middle of the bridge’s upper span, got out and leaped, witnesses told police.
He was still alive when pulled from the water by a US Coast Guard ship, but was pronounced dead at Staten Island University Hospital.
Meanwhile, Helfer’s critically injured wife was loaded onto a stretcher, with an oxygen mask over her face.
The couple’s stunned children were led from the home, with police officers holding their hands, and turned over to their mom’s sister. She gave the kids stuffed animals before driving them away.
The victim regularly showed signs of abuse, a neighbor said.
“It happens every summer,” the neighbor said. “Her face would be swollen up. She had a big bruise.”
“After he’d hit her, she’d go inside and wouldn’t come out afterwards,” the neighbor said.
“She didn’t have a way out; she used to say that she didn’t have a job and had to take care of the kids, so she had to stay with him.”
Another neighbor said Brian Helfer, who suffered a back injury and hadn’t been able to work in about two years, had become addicted to painkillers.
“Lately, he was taking too much oxycodone,” the neighbor said.