11-Year-Old Stab Victim Grilled on Witness Stand

By DYLAN CAMPBELL

Mikayla Capers, an 11-year-old girl who was stabbed 16 times in 2014, says she has no doubt that the handcuffed man sitting in front of her was her attacker, but an agreement between the defense and the prosecution Thursday deemed part of her testimony false, putting
her credibility in question.

During the trial at Brooklyn Supreme Court Tuesday, Mikayla confidently pointed to Daniel St. Hubert, the defendant, as the man who attacked her and killed her friend, P.J. Avitto, 6, in the elevator of their East New York housing project on June 1, 2014, stabbing them both over and over.

Mikayla testified that she had identified the defendant in a photograph shown to her by police while in the hospital and recognized him as the man who followed her and P.J. into their building to attack them. The defense argued she’s a liar, but both sides agreed that the photographic identification never happened.

“Mikayla, you’re making it up, using your imagination,” defense attorney Howard Greenberg said to the 11-year-old as she took the stand for a second day after hours of testimony on Tuesday.

During the lumbering cross-examination filled with objections, Greenberg persisted, asking if she was sure she knew the defendant and where she knew him from.

“You’re making it up that a police officer showed you a picture in the hospital, aren’t you?” Greenberg asked, questioning if she saw Hubert on the news.

“That’s not true,” Mikayla quickly replied.

As the testimony went on the 6th grader tucked into herself, chin down, lips pouting and occasionally chewing the end of her jacket but unwavering in her answer that she is not lying.

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

“Yes,” Mikayla replied.

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

But Greenberg, an attorney with a high success rate and reputation for being relentless, has been attempting to discredit Mikayla’s testimony from the beginning. He argues his client is not guilty of the charges of second-degree murder, attempted murder, assault and weapon possession.

When Mikayla was excused from the stand and exited the court, both sides filed the stipulation confirming inconsistency in her testimony to the jury.

She’s “delusional,” said Greenberg during lunch break. “The government lost this case today.”

Two additional witnesses took the stand, testifying that they had seen the defendant near the scene of the crime. Shameka Hampton, the woman who found Mikayla’s bloody body and called 911, said she saw Hubert outside the building moments before the attack and later running from the scene.

Angela Roberson, a grandmother who was at the playground when the attack happened, said she saw the defendant running from the building along a path where the knife was later found.

But the defense said that what they witnessed proved nothing. Neither saw the defendant directly enter the building. Neither saw the weapon. But both women on the witness stand made it clear they believed the killer was in the room.

The case bears many resemblances to the current Manhattan trial of Yoselyn Ortega, the nanny accused of stabbing to death two young children of an affluent family on the Upper West Side, including the bloodiness and seeming senselessness of the stabbings and the apparent lack of a clear motive in both cases. The Brooklyn case, involving victims of color in impoverished East New York, has drawn far less media attention.