Just minutes before a 37-year-old man was fatally stabbed outside a Brooklyn bar early Sunday, he messaged his pregnant fiancée to let her know he’d soon be home.
He also wanted to let her know he loved her.
“The last message I got from him was 2:39 and they said he passed at 2:50,” said Maiy Seyedahmad, 34. “[It said] he loves me so much and he’s leaving.”
Shortly afterward, Daryl Dawkins was found knifed in the chest outside Catch 22 on Third Ave. near 73rd St. in Bay Ridge, according to police.
The couple, who were expecting a child in October, had met in September 2023, their first date at a restaurant a block from where Dawkins would take his last breaths. They quickly fell in love, embarking on a whirlwind relationship.
“Everything happened so fast, but it didn’t feel fast. It was just different, it’s like I’ve known him forever,” said Seyedahmad. “I’ve never met anyone like him.”
Dawkins, who grew up in Brooklyn but was living in Tobyhanna, Penn., moved back to New York to make a life with Seyedahmad.
“He said I never wanted to come back to New York,” she said. “After two weeks or three he moved in.”
The heartbroken fiancée said Dawkins was devoted to his three children, ages 4, 5 and 9, and regularly rounded them up from Pennsylvania, Manhattan and Long Island to bring to Brooklyn so they could all be together. He was overjoyed to be a new father again.
Courtesy of Maiy Seyedahmad
Maiy Seyedahmad and Daryl Dawkins.
“It’s still is not hitting right, nothing makes sense,” said the heartbroken fiancée, who heard from a shopkeeper on the block about Dawkins’ tragic last moments.
“Now I’m hearing he was pleading for his life, he was on his knees yelling,” said Seyedahmad. “He was yelling and he was calling ‘Ma’, ‘Maiy’, he was telling his mom to watch over the new baby.”
“I don’t know who would want to do this to him,” said Seyedahmad. “It’s unfair that this person took a beautiful soul, not just from his kids, but from the world. I’m not going to rest until he gets justice and the person that did this is behind bars.”
The fiancée pleaded for anyone who has information to come forward.
“I know there was a lot of witnesses, I just hope if anyone knows anything they say something.”
On Sunday, a neighbor who lives near Catch 22 said she hears shouting “all the time” coming from the establishment.
“This has been getting way out of hand, this bar,” said the woman, who asked to be identified only as Sue. “A lot of violence, a lot of trouble.”
The woman has witnessed numerous fights stemming from the bar throughout the years, including one in which a group of female attackers jumped a woman and repeatedly kicked her in the head and hit her with their high-heeled shoes.
“This bar is the number-one bar they have to close,” said Sue, who has lived in the neighborhood for 20 years. “They close it down, they change the name all the time [and] they open it again.”
The disgruntled neighbor heard screaming coming from the bar the night of the slaying but didn’t call 911 as the commotion has become commonplace on the block.
Seyedahmad said Dawkins might have lived if he had gotten help sooner. “If someone called 911 when he was on his knees…no one called the cops?”
Courtesy of Maiy Seyedahmad
A sonogram image of Seyedahmad and Dawkins’ son, who is due in October and will be named after his father. (Courtesy of Maiy Seyedahmad)
The couple found out they were having a boy in March and were mulling over baby names, but Seyedahmad says she now knows what their son will be called—Daryl, after his father.
“He already has another son named after him,” said Seyedahmad. “We were thinking of different names but because of this I don’t want to give him a different name.”
