In this July 14, 2008 file photo, actor Morgan Freeman and granddaughter Edina Hines attend the world premiere of “The Dark Knight” in New York. On Sunday Aug. 16, 2015, Hines, 33, an actress, was found dead with stab wounds to her chest in the street in front of her Upper Manhattan apartment building. On Monday her boyfriend Lamar Davenport was arrested on a murder charge in connection with her death. AP FILE PHOTO
NEW YORK — The boyfriend of Morgan Freeman’s granddaughter was found standing over her lifeless body with a knife still sticking out of her chest when police officers arrested him on a Manhattan street, a prosecutor said at his arraignment Wednesday.
Lamar Davenport, 30, did not enter a plea as he appeared on a video monitor from a hospital to be arraigned in Edena Hines’ death. The 33-year-old actress was found Sunday in front of her apartment building, stabbed 15 times in the heart, lungs and liver, Assistant District Attorney Nicholas Penfold said.
“This is a brutal murder with overwhelming evidence, where the defendant intentionally killed the victim,” he said.
Davenport, who police have said was in a relationship with Hines, was arrested when officers responded to a 911 call reporting the stabbing.
“Police officers arrived on scene and found the defendant still on the scene, standing over the victim with a knife still protruding from the chest,” Penfold told Judge Kevin McGrath. Penfold said there were multiple witnesses to the attack and that police have surveillance video that captured it unfolding.
Court papers say one of the witnesses told police they saw Davenport pull the woman into the street and then saw her on the ground with Davenport “repeatedly stabbing the woman in the back and torso.”
Davenport was taken to Bellevue Hospital Center for a psychiatric evaluation after his arrest. His attorney, Annie Costanzo, said only that she would wait until the case is moved to state Supreme Court, which typically happens after an indictment is handed up, to ask a judge for bail.
Hines was Freeman’s step-granddaughter, but Freeman’s publicist says the Oscar-winning actor thought of her as his granddaughter. She was the granddaughter of Freeman’s first wife.
Hines, a graduate of New York University, had just finished filming “Landing Up,” a movie about a street-wise woman who falls for a man and must decide how to divulge her past. She wrote in a blog post earlier this year that she felt “unfulfilled” with the direction of her career.
Freeman’s publicist did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.