Teen suspect who 'heard voices' charged in NYC fatal stabbings of dad, 5-year old half-brother, boy's mom

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Dec 1

The Bronx teenager suspected in the grisly stabbings of his father, 5-year-old half-brother and the boy's mom has been charged with murder, police said Thursday.

Jayden Rivera, 19, was checked into a psychiatric ward in Westchester, after the butchered bodies of 38-year-old Jonathan Rivera, his girlfriend Hanoi Peralta, 33, and the couple's son, Kayden Rivera, were discovered early Sunday in a Bronx apartment.

Police said the teen — an upstate college student who remained hospitalized Thursday — claimed to his mother that he was "hearing voices" before the vicious triple slaying.

"Later on, when he returned home, he stated to his mother again that he was hearing voices and that he thought that Mr. Rivera and Ms. Peralta were going to hurt him," NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny told reporters this week.

In addition to the murder raps, cops also charged him with manslaughter and criminal possession of a weapon.

The suspect left the apartment after the stabbings but returned to pound the bodies with a kitchen pot — striking them so violently that it dented the kitchen object, according to cops and police sources.

Police said he had been babysitting his half-brother on Saturday night while his dad and Hanoi went on a "paint and sip" date — just hours before the killings.

At around 6:40 a.m. Sunday, cops responding to a 911 call at the building at 674 East 136th Street in Mott Haven found Jonathan Rivera dead in the first-floor hallway, and Peralta and Kayden also mortally wounded inside their apartment.

The boy had been so brutally stabbed that he was essentially disemboweled, Kenny said.

The accused killer, still covered in blood, returned home to the north Bronx apartment he shared with his mom, where he allegedly told her that he believed the victims were going to hurt him, according to Kenny and sources.

He was checked into the psych ward at the Westchester County Medical Center in Valhalla and allegedly confessed to hospital staff and county cops, Kenny said.

Friends and relatives said Jayden Rivera was a student at SUNY Oswego and was attending the state school on a scholarship.

"I can't believe it," Roland Bocauski, a superintendent at the building where Jayden lives with his mom, told The Post Wednesday.

"I don't believe it, I swear to God, because I don't see anything bad about these people. I manage eight buildings and I can see in their faces when [people] are crazy and when they are not," Bocauski said.

"I never seen see him crazy."

Jonathan Rivera, who also has two daughters who live in Connecticut, was described by friends and relatives as a doting dad who worked two jobs to support his family, including at Kayden's Bronx school.

He and Peralta had broken up about a year ago, but in recent months the couple was reconciling and trying to rekindle their relationship, they said.

"I feel this is not supposed to happen," his father, Miguel, told The Post. "The day they told me I was thinking this was like a movie. But, no. Now it's real."

Additional reporting by Georgett Roberts