Baby-faced teen busted in NYC stabbing death of girlfriend, 16: cops

The teen accused of stabbing his 16-year-old girlfriend to death inside a Harlem apartment over the weekend has surrendered to cops, authorities said. 

Zyaire Crumbley, 18, joined by an attorney, turned himself in Monday afternoon in connection to the Sunday evening slaying of Saniyah Lawrence inside their apartment on Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard near West 136th Street, cops said. 

Crumbley – who has six prior robbery arrests – was charged with murder, cops said. 

Following his surrender, Crumbley was taken to Harlem Hospital for chest pains, police sources said. 

The arrest came hours after police released a youthful-looking mugshot of the on-the-lam accused killer in the hopes of trying to nab him.

“He’s out there,” Lawrence’s distraught maternal grandmother, Denise Jackson, 51, said Monday of Crumbley, adding that she knows him and has spoken to him on the phone in the past.

“I just want them to find him,” the grieving grandma said. “His face is on the news. He’s on the run. Just find him and put him behind bars!” 

Crumbley stabbed Lawrence in the neck around 5:40 p.m. Sunday, police said. She was rushed to Harlem Hospital, where she was pronounced dead. 

Jackson said she can’t begin to figure out why her young granddaughter was killed. 

“Everyone that knows Saniyah would never want to hurt her because she’s not that type of person,” the grandma said. “What was the motive?

“She’s a very lovable person. Why would you do that? Why would you just take her life?”

The deadly violence came about eight hours after Juan Carlos Cuevas, 35, a nearby convenience store clerk, said he heard Crumbley yelling at his gal pal inside the shop. 

Police sources said Monday that it does not appear Crumbley had a history of domestic violence with the teen victim, the sources said.

But a neighbor said Monday that it appeared trouble had been brewing between the couple for some time – at least since they moved into their first-floor apartment six months ago. 

The discord particularly heated up Sunday, according to the woman, a grad student who declined to give her name. 

“It always sounded like someone was running and someone was screaming or yelling,” the neighbor said. “And it’s always been a lot of shouting, a lot of heavy things being thrown around. It’s just always been that way.”

“But yesterday, it escalated,” she said. “In fact, it got so bad I had to step out to get something to eat.”

“But I never knew who to advocate for in that apartment because I never saw them,” she added. 

“They had a mat, like a welcome mat, that said ‘grateful,’ and I joked about it because of what was going on in there every night. But it was… terrible!” she said. “I was always being woken up in the middle of the night, yelling, people running, crashing. There’s just very odd behavior all the time.”