Early Saturday morning, a Staten Island man was fatally stabbed outside of a restaurant where he and his high school sweetheart had been celebrating their recent engagement. Witnesses say that a kitchen worker at España Restaurant stabbed Antonio Lacertosa, 27, around 2 a.m. after a brawl had broken out that Lacertosa wasn't initially part of. According to the Post, Lacertosa had gone outside to check on his brothers, who had gotten kicked out of the restaurant and retaliated by urinating against the wall of a restaurant, sparking the fight.
Lacertosa, fiancee Bridgette Schneider, his brothers and their friends had been out celebrating the engagement Friday evening; they ended up at España's for celebratory drinks around midnight. Two of the brothers were allegedly kicked out (possibly for drunkness), and they then urinated on the side of the restaurant. That's when the manager and an associate spotted and confronted them. According to ABC, witnesses say there were about 50 people outside when the brawl was underway. At some point, the manager's associate allegedly pulled knives from the kitchen—which is when Lacertosa came outside.
“The girls were outside screaming ‘Somebody got stabbed.’ So I went outside. The kid was outside bleeding ferociously on the floor, laid out, not breathing. Then in the next five minutes he wasn’t breathing or nothing,” witness John Perrotta told CBS. The manager, Ridi Zeneli, turned himself in and was questioned by police yesterday afternoon; the alleged stabber fled the scene, and is still at large. No arrests have been made yet.
Lacertosa and Schneider, who met at Tottenville High School, had dated for eight years before he popped the question a few months ago. Lacertosa’s sister, Jeanine Caruvana, told the Post he proposed at the Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree lighting: “They were truly in love, and were eager to embark on their journey together."
