Inside NYC mom’s years of terror at hands of ‘devil’ son who threw her from third-story window: ‘I’m scared of him’
A battered Queens mom said she was terrorized by her drug-addled son for years, reaching a horrifying climax last month when he put a knife to her throat and threw her from a third-story window.
Paraskevi Tsintzelis, 64, who withstood a lifetime of beatings and abuse at the hands of her troubled 36-year-old son, said the breaking point came on Nov. 15, when she returned from checking the mail at her Astoria apartment building and found him waiting in her living room, she told The Post.
“I said, ‘Leave,’ and he said, ‘No, I want to talk to you,’” Paraskevi said from her hospital bed Wednesday. “He had the knives in his hand. He said, ‘Don’t yell or I am gonna stab you.’ He was breaking things…picture frames with my daughter. He wouldn’t leave. He got angry and started chasing me around the living room area.
“He was hurting me with the back of the knife. He forced me to go into my bedroom. He took my cellphone and my house phone so I couldn’t call for help,” she said. ”He was smoking drugs in the house and blowing it in my face. I was afraid of him.
“He said to me, ‘F–k you bitch.’ He had the knife at my neck.”
Then it got worse.
“He forced me on the window ledge. He had the knife at my neck,” she said. “I told him I wanted to use the bathroom and I wanted some water. He said no. I asked him for my asthma pump and he said no. ‘You are going to see what happens. No one is going to see it. Who is going to know what happened?’
“He pushed me hard with both hands. I don’t know what happened after that. I don’t remember. When I woke up I was in the hospital. My daughter came. She told me I was in the hospital,” Paraskevi said. “When he pushed me he thought I was going to die. When I saw the knives, I thought I was going to die, too. I was no match for him. I’m lucky to be alive.”
She was left with crippling injuries, including bleeding of the brain, a broken left shoulder and arm, an injured right arm and multiple facial fractures. She now has a rod and six screws in her left leg, needs to walk with a cane and may still need further surgery.
And yet, despite his history of abuse, Paraskevi said she still worries about her son and has tried to help him, once even shipping him off to a rehab facility in Vermont.
“I give him food, I give him this, I give him that. What else was I supposed to do? I was afraid of him,” she said. “Wherever you put the devil, it’s still the devil. I’m sorry for my words.”
Only after she miraculously survived the three-story fall was she free of her son, George Tsintzelis, who is now locked up at Rikers Island without bail on attempted murder and assault charges.
The accused thug told police he was miles away from his mom’s apartment when she “fell” from her window — but cops rebuffed the claim, as did his mom and sister.
He even forced his mother to call his sister, Argyro Tsintezelis, at knifepoint to beg for money during the terrifying Nov. 15 incident, they said.
“I could hear him whispering in the background, ‘Tell her you need help. Tell her you want money,’” said Argyro, 39. “My mother was saying, ‘Please help me and bring the money. He has a knife at my throat.’
“I didn’t want to believe at first. He is my brother,” she said. “She’s nothing but nice to him. Imagine birthing a child you took care of … who tried to kill you.”
She said she thought her mother was dead when she heard what happened.
“She went to the hospital as unknown. She had no ID. I had to look for her,” Argyro said. “I panicked. I was about to call the morgue.”
George Tsintzelis is due back in Queens court in March. The public defender representing him did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Post.
Meanwhile, Paraskevi Tsintzelis says she is still haunted by her son’s allegedly near fatal attack, and recounted a terrifying nightmare about the incident.
“I think his hands are still on my face,” she said. “I saw him in the closet. I saw him on top of me with the knife.”
