A Queens couple fatally stabbed by their unhinged landlord in a gruesome triple slaying was on the verge of moving out before being killed, says the dead man’s brother, breaking his silence on the eve of his sibling’s funeral.
Tragic pair Wayne Thomas, 57, and Evette Sweeney, 51, were just waiting for their St. Albans landlord, David Daniel, to return their deposit when Daniel allegedly went berserk and stabbed his girlfriend to death before going after the couple in their basement apartment Nov. 14, Ronald Thomas told The Post.
Sweeney had trouble walking, and the pair were hoping to get a new home to better accommodate her, Ronald Thomas said — as he prepared to help bury his brother Wayne on Saturday, more than three weeks after the senseless slayings.
“They were planning to leave,” Ronald, 55, said of his sibling and Sweeney. “They should have left from August. They found a place but didn’t have a chance to get out. I was told he was waiting for his deposit from the landlord.
“It was devasting,” he said of the slayings. “I couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat. We still cannot believe this happened. The family cannot come to grips with this terrible tragedy.”
Daniel, 54, was arraigned Monday on an indictment charging him with three counts each of first- and third-degree murder, and criminal possession of a weapon in the bloody incident.
He was arrested after walking into the 113th Precinct station house shortly after 7 a.m. Nov. 14 and allegedly confessing to the grisly slayings, telling cops he left the back door open for them.
“I did something bad,” he allegedly told police.
Inside the house, cops found the bloodied bodies of Daniel’s girlfriend, 51-year-old Coleen Ceasar, and the two tenants, still inside their basement apartment.
The next day, Daniel told reporters as he was being led from the precinct to Queens Criminal Court that he stabbed the victims because of “a lot of pressure.”
Ronald Thomas said his brother worked at JFK International Airport, where Ronald works as a supervisor in the cargo division and had gotten him the job.
Wayne Thomas worked for Woldwise Flight Services in a warehouse, driving a forklift and loading and unloading cargo at a different section of the Queens airport, his brother said.
Relatives and friends said that’s where he met Sweeney, who worked for Corporate Loss Prevention Associates, an outside contractor, with the security team in Building 9 at JFK.
The pair both toiled the midnight to 7 a.m. shift, commuting to work together.
“He was always walking playing reggae music louder than he should,” a coworker told The Post. “He had a speaker hanging from his neck. You’d see him by the morning coffee truck waiting for her, then they’d leave together.”
Thomas was a native of Jamaica, and Sweeney grew up in a Jamaican family in the UK, friends and relatives said.
Wayne Thomas was the eldest of six children and migrated to the US about 20 years ago, his brother said.
He moved into the Queens apartment with his girlfriend last year. His brother dismisses Daniel’s claim that he was irked at the pair because they owed him back rent.
“That’s not him,” Ronald Thomas said of his sibling.
“I’m just hurting badly right now,” he added. “I’m just cut up inside. This is the first tragedy in our family. Everyone [else] died of old age. God bless his soul for the time he spent on earth.”
He said Daniel, who is due back in court next week, “should get the maximum penalty for destroying three human beings and cutting out of life, any achievements in life, any happiness.
“He took that away from three people,” he added. “He should get life without parole. That’s what he deserves — never to see the streets anymore. He lost that right.”
Services for Wayne Thomas will be held Saturday at J. Foster Phillips Funeral Services, 179-24 Linden Ave., in Jamaica, followed by burial at Pinelawn Memorial Park.
Funeral services for Sweeney have not been made public.