A 19-year-old Brooklyn college student relatives called “a gift from God” was killed during a bloody brawl Sunday morning on the campus of Cornell University.
Anthony Nazaire, a sophomore at neighboring Ithaca College, had just returned to school after spending the summer in Flatbush with his mother and older sister.
“Less than one week he was here with us, today he’s gone,” said the teen’s godfather, Jacques Dorsainvil.
The business major was stabbed several times as the massive 2 a.m. melee spilled across the center of the Ivy League school’s sprawling upstate campus, police said. Another Ithaca student who was slashed in the fracas was treated at an area hospital and released.
The name of the other student was not immediately released.
There were no arrests, and no details about the weapon used in the stabbing.
“I hope they get caught and justice is done,” Nazaire’s devastated mother, Katia Toussaint, said of her son’s killers as she returned early Monday to the family’s Brooklyn home. “I didn’t send my son to school to get murdered.”
Many said the bright and ambitious student was more likely to help break up a fight than be involved in one.
“What saddens me the most is he didn’t die here in Flatbush, but died away at school,” Nazaire’s cousin Chanelle Nazaire wrote in a series of Facebook posts Sunday. “I just wanted to go your graduation, I’m going to your funeral instead.”
Dorsainvil, 61, broke down in tears as he talked about the tragedy.
“God gave him gifts. He would hold me and tell me how good he was going to be,” Dorsainvil told the Daily News. “He was an intelligent man, polite with everyone. I don’t get it, why this happened to us. Everybody knows he’s a gift from God.”
Nazaire rose from humble beginnings on Newkirk Ave., in the heart of Flatbush.
He was an inquisitive student who excelled at Brooklyn Theatre Arts High School in Canarsie.
He had big dreams of becoming an entrepreneur.
His academic achievements helped him score a scholarship that allowed him to head upstate to try to make his dreams a reality.
“He was one of the most ambitious and determined and hardworking young males I’ve ever worked with in 10 years,” said Emilia Wiles, Nazaire’s college prep counselor through a program called College Confident. “He was one of the sweetest, kindest, brightest young men. He was the happiest kid you’ve ever met.”
The outgoing aspiring CEO fell in love with Ithaca during a visit to the campus during his senior year in high school.
He was a member of the executive board of Brothers4Brothers, a student organization dedicated to empowering men of color at Ithaca.
A campus gathering is slated for 4 p.m. on Monday at Ithaca’s Muller Chapel.
“I hope you will hold these students — along with their families, friends, classmates and professors — in your thoughts and prayers at this difficult and tragic time,” Ithaca College President Tom Rochon said in a statement.
“He’s a gentleman. I can tell you that,” junior Joe Fenning, 19, said of Nazaire, adding that the business-minded scholar didn’t seem like the type to even go to parties. “I was surprised.”
The orientation week party was hosted by the Cornell chapter of Omega Psi Phi, a predominantly African-American fraternity.
Police said hundreds of people attended the student-organized event, and several fights broke out as the bash at Willard Straight Hall, Cornell’s student union, came to an end.
Witness Trevon Hanks, 22, a student at nearby Tompkins Cortland Community College, told The News the mayhem escalated quickly and he saw a person “covered in blood” on the ground as women held him and yelled for help.
“I saw a bunch of girls and two guys arguing about something,” Hanks said.
Ithaca police said surveillance footage shows “numerous persons” recording the fatal fight on their phones, though no footage of the brawl emerged publicly.
The stabbing was the first murder in the bucolic town of 30,000 in five years, police said.
When officers arrived at the campus, they found Nazaire and the other bloodied victim in front of Olin Hall, which houses Cornell’s School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering.
Nazaire was taken to Cayuga Medical Center “for treatment of serious injuries,” police said, but he could not be saved.
In addition to his mother and 24-year-old sister, he is survived by two younger brothers, a younger sister, and his father. “I just see his face now, his beautiful smile, his strength, coming out of Flatbush and using his incredible intelligence to get out, and now this,” said Brooklyn neighbor and family friend Esther Estime. “He went to college and did the right thing, I don’t know what went wrong.”
With Rikki Reyna
