Julian Corniell was stabbed to death at a McDonald’s restaurant in Sunnyside last month. The teenager who allegedly stabbed the 14-year-old is being held without bail after he was arraigned Thursday. Via Google Maps and GoFundMe
March 21, 2025 By Bill Parry
A teenager is being held without bail after he was arraigned in Queens Supreme Court on Thursday in connection to a fatal stabbing of a youngster outside a Sunnyside McDonald’s last month.
The 16-year-old was indicted by a Queens grand jury and charged with murder in the second degree and other related crimes for the killing of a 14-year-old boy during an afterschool brawl on Queens Boulevard on Valentine’s Day.
After the Queens District Attorney’s office secured the indictment, members of the NYPD’s Regional Fugitive Task Force arrested the teen in the confines of the 110th Precinct on Thursday morning, according to an NYPD spokesman who could not say which neighborhood the teenager was in when he was taken into custody.
The teen was transported to the 108th Precinct in Long Island City, where he was booked for the murder of Julian Corniell, of 159th Street in South Jamaica.
“Any homicide is heartbreaking for the family of the victim,” Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz said on Friday. “This death, in particular, is tragic because of the ages of all involved.”
Corniell was a victim of repeated bullying while attending middle school in Jackson Heights and high school in Long Island City. He transferred to Hillcrest High School in Jamaica at the start of the school year.
According to the charges, on February 14, at approximately 3:25 p.m., more than a dozen teenagers who attend different high schools gathered inside the McDonald’s restaurant at 38-02 Queens Blvd. Corniell entered with two friends as a fight between two rival groups of teens broke out. As the afterschool brawl spilled outside of the fast food joint, the 16-year-old defendant is alleged to have stabbed Corniell repeatedly in the left side of his torso with a knife. Corniell fled the hostile teens and made it across Queens Boulevard where he collapsed on the street.
Police from the 108th Precinct in Long Island City responded to a 911 call of a male stabbed at the location and found Corniell unconscious and unresponsive. A bloody knife was recovered nearby.
EMS responded to the crime scene and rushed Corniell to New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, where he succumbed to his injuries and was pronounced dead a short while later.
The 16-year-old defendant was additionally charged with manslaughter in the first degrees, assault in the first and second degrees, gang assault in the first and second degrees, and criminal possession of a weapon.
“The attack on Julian Corniell was made even more tragic because it happened, as alleged, at the hands of a fellow teen,” Katz said. “A grand jury has now returned serious charges against the defendant and my office will seek justice.”
Queens Supreme Court Justice Bruna DiBiase remanded the 16-year-old defendant into custody without bail and ordered him to return to court on April 30. If convicted, he faces up to 25 years to life in prison.
Police arrested a 14-year-old boy hours after the murder and charged him with gang assault in the first degree. His case is being handled in Family Court, according to the Queens DA’s office.
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