Dibs

The Marvel Comics character Blade the Vampire Slayer was a role model inspiring a young Brooklyn man to kill the violent drunkard who had, moments before, shot the youth’s mother to death. As reported in the Downtown Star, Emmanuel Allen returned last week to the Bedford-Stuyvesant apartment that he had once shared with his girlfriend Vilma Rosario: According to his brother, Allen was only picking up some belongings. But he had beaten Rosario and once attacked the woman’s teenage daughter while they were together. When he arrived on the fateful night, he shot Rosario, the teenage girl fled screaming, and Rosario’s 23- and 16-year-old sons confronted the killer: “By some twist of fate, someone in the house was a fan of the movie Blade” — starring Wesley Snipes and based on the comic book — “in which a hero uses a sword, among other things, to slay vampires. The household possessed a replica of the sword” that is wielded in the film, “and the brothers used it to slay their own monster…. One of the brothers grabbed the sword and sliced open Allen’s chest. In pain, the murderer dropped the .45-caliber gun he [had] used to murder Rosario. While Raymond Garcia sliced at the killer, his brother Juju grabbed the firearm and shot Allen once in the head. The brothers had a stoic reaction to their actions. Raymond has publicly stated he does not regret their actions, claiming the police who interviewed him told him he did the right thing.”