MILTON, Mass. — A man on a rampage fatally stabbed his 17-year-old sister, decapitated his 5-year-old sister in front of a police officer and turned toward his 9-year-old sister with a knife in his hand before officers shot him dead in what their chief described as “a killing field.”
There was no clear motive for the events that unfolded Saturday, the day after the 5-year-old’s birthday, in a tony Boston suburb. But there was no doubt at the carnage wrought by Kerby Revelus, 23, against his sisters in the two-family home they shared with their parents and grandmother.
Five-year-old Bianca was killed as a cake for her birthday, which investigators think was Friday, sat on the kitchen table. Nine-year-old Sarafina dialed 911 and watched police shoot her brother as her elder sister, 17-year-old Samantha, lay dead on the floor.
Sarafina was hospitalized Sunday with defensive wounds to her hands and stab wounds in her abdomen and one of her legs, police said.
“When I walked up to the first officer (on the scene), I could see the whole story right in his face,” said Milton Police Chief Richard G. Wells Jr. “This just told me that this was something very bad.”
Investigators think Revelus targeted Samantha, a high school senior, and fatally stabbed her with a household knife while their grandmother was doing laundry in the basement.
The children’s parents were away. Their mother, identified by friends as Regine Revelus, is a nurse at a Boston hospital, Wells said.
Sarafina called 911 about 5 p.m. An officer on patrol in the neighborhood arrived within a minute, Wells said, and could hear an altercation inside as he reached the second floor.
“As the officer entered the door, (Revelus) decapitated (Bianca) in front of him,” Wells said. “He actually walked into a killing field. He walked into such carnage, as far as the atrocity of it, I’ve never seen it.”
Within moments, four officers were inside and two of them shot Revelus as he tried to get to Sarafina, Wells said. Revelus fell clutching the knife.
Revelus had served jail time on a gun charge, Wells said, but the details would not be released until today.
