A high school senior found dead inside her upstate New York apartment wrapped up a quick phone call with her estranged father moments before a friend allegedly brutalized her.
Breanne Keane, a 19-year-old a senior at the Lehman Alternative Community School who was set to graduate in June, was stabbed to death inside her Cayuga Heights apartment on Saturday.
Damian Stewart, 20, was arrested at the scene, according to a statement from the Cayuga Heights Police Department.
Her father, Matthew Keane, said that she was planning to pursue canine training through a management program at SUNY Cobleskill after graduating.
Matthew told WSYR that his final conversation with his daughter took place at 1:20 p.m. on Saturday, less than hour before Cayuga Heights police received the first report of a stabbing at the apartment complex.
“She said she was doing okay, and she was hanging out with a friend,” Matthew Keane told the outlet.
“The call lasted 41 seconds, and that was the last time I spoke with Breanne.”
When police arrived at the father’s home in Ithaca later that evening, he “knew it wasn’t good.”
“I just dropped to my knees,” he told the outlet. “It was really hard.”
Matthew Keane told Syracuse.com that his daughter was still alive when police reached him, but died while he was headed to the hospital.
She lived alone in the apartment provided by the Learning Web, an Ithaca-based charity that arranges housing and career opportunities for local at-risk youth, according to the outlet.
Over the weekend, Matthew Keane posted a series of unbalanced Facebook posts that abruptly pivoted from celebrating to condemning his slain daughter.
In one post, he alluded to an alleged romantic relationship she had with Stewart and accused other adults who oversaw their dates of contributing to her death.
Stewart is being held on a second-degree murder charge in the Tompkins County Jail.
Read the full article here
