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Disturbing details have emerged about the 22-year-old man who confessed to killing Pace University student Kevin Pravia. Among his disclosures, Jeromie Cancel said he watched the horror movie "Saw" after smothering a sleeping Pravia.
Apparently Pravia met Cancel, who had offered to sell drugs to him, in Union Square early Saturday morning. They went back to Pravia's apartment on West 15th Street in Chelsea. Pravia's roommate discovered her friend's body on Sunday.
When Cancel was being questioned about a different incident (his father called the police, to complain his son had stolen his Playstation early Tuesday), apparently he confessed to killing Pravia. Per the Times, "When Mr. Pravia fell asleep, Mr. Cancel said that he punched him in the face, tied a television cord around his neck, put a plastic bag in his mouth and suffocated him with a pillow."
Cancel's father Jesus Soto told the Post, "He's mentally imbalanced. He seemed off-balance. He didn't seem right," and said, "I called the cops, and when they pulled up ... he just turned to the cops and told them he just killed someone." According to the Daily News, Soto told reporters his son had drifted between cities--including a stint at a mental institution--before coming back to Queens and staying with him. And when reporters outside a precinct house asked Cancel why he did it, he yelled, "Because I wanted to. You got a problem with that?"
Pravia's neighbor mourned the loss to NY1, “The kid was only 19 years old. He had his whole life ahead of him. It’s just a drag. Gotta be real tough for the family. They sent him away to college, to get this kind of news.”
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NEVER let a stranger into your apartment - and then fall asleep while they're still there! What was this kid thinking?
Douchebag. Watch him use the insanity defense.
stories like this always make me think we should have capital punishment, but with torture techniques.
plk779, he won't make that mistake again.
yeah, it's always a total drag when your son dies. really blows the whole morning.
only buy drugs from people you know, kids! and it's really best not to bring homeless dealers back to your apartment.
look at that smug m*therf*ckr. i don't care if he's unstable. he should not be roaming the streets.
i wish someone would "cancel" him.
"his father called the police, to complain his son had stolen his Playstation early Tuesday"
I'm confused. this guy stole a Playstation from his father??? what a wacked out family. this kid obviously was having problems for a LONG time. you dont suddenly steal playstations and start selling drugs and strangling people out of the blue. nice work, dad.
uggh..who can you get more mad at? the homeless guy or the UTTER stupidity of this college student?
These are the types of vermin that should be used in our science labs to test out drugs for the most horrid diseases. We inject them with the disease then we se if we can create a cure. Instead of using animals we can use these vermin. At least we can start to use them for something that might benefit humanity before they eventually cease to exist.
That's the Darwinian equivalent of killing two birds with one stone...
Folks, Jeromie Cancel IS insane. He wouldn't be eligible for death penalty even if NY used it. The question is why wasn't Cancel taking medication if he was "mentally imbalanced as his father stated.
Also, Kevin Pravia probably passed out from partying all night. He didn't voluntarily go to bed while a stranger was in his apartment.
homeless person? what?
I'm confused too...who said Cancel was homeless?
I like his dino shirt. I think my brother had one just like it when he was four.
yeah, I just got that, he wasn't homeless. Anyway, this could all be b.s. he could be covering for somebody, I'm just saying...
lanciano: you obviously have no personal experience with mental illness or sympathy for it. was the father doing everything in his power to understand and treat his son's illness? from the sound of it, maybe not, though who knows. but there is still pretty much NOTHING he can do to control the actions of his son. you cannot just force adults to take medication, or stay inside, or get a job, or go to a mental hospital. it is not easy to deal with mentally unstable people, especially when they revert to destructive behavior and steal from their families, disappear, and even murder people
Amoral sociopath meets clueless out-of-towner with zero street smarts. Never a good ending.
This guy needs to be put down like the rabid dog he is.
"you cannot just force adults to take medication, or stay inside, or get a job, or go to a mental hospital."
Yeah you can - it's called committing. If they're a danger to themselves or the people around them, which this guy obviously was, his dad could've had him committed. Let's just give dad the benefit of the doubt and assume Jeromie hadn't acted out violently in the past.
The main lesson is that people shouldn't be lulled into complacency about the social environment in NYC. As nice as it seems now, there are still alot of dangerous crazies of every ethnicity and background threatening all of us. We need to restore some good ole fashioned New Yawk paranoia.
hey kiddies, guess what? you're not in Kansas anymore, you're in New York.
And if you insist on getting shitfaced drunk, scoring drugs in parks and trusting total strangers, you're gonna eventually get hurt.
Note that this story recycles itself constantly, sometimes its a girl, sometimes a boy, but the cycle continues. A little common sense can go a long way here...
TGirl..you are my type, wanna come over to my place and watch "Saw"? Meet me at Tompkins Square Park, 3am Thurs Morning. I'll bring the weed.
umm, sorry, I'm booked up... but don't give up, there are many clueless transplants out there would take you up on your very classy offer.
Capital Punishment for all these sociopaths!!
chris lee, hilarious. i want in.
I'm not sure why the headline refers to the accused killer as a drifter.
yeah my mistake on the homeless thing - i saw drifter and thought 'homeless'. regardless, bad move on the kid's part, sad story.
Jessie..call me at 718 555 3857..I live in my dad's basement in the Bronx, so if he answers just ask for me, he's an a**hole, I hate him, he drinks and he beats my pet rat...
If things had gone just a little bit differently this Cancel kid would be in the NYPD knocking down innocent bicyclists in TImes Square.
TGIrl..don't give up on us just yet. You sound nice, I but you have nice feet...
I "bet" you have nice feet..oops :) pervs don't spell too good.
anyway..don't wanna go too far with this. I feel really bad for that student's parents.
I think the biggest lesson is: don't go to pace university. Bad education you will receive.
Sorry, but isn't going someplace to find someone to buy drugs for pretty bush-league at this point? Don't most dealers just come to you in NYC?
Yeah, hadn't this bumpkin ever heard of Craigslist? It's not perfect but when you're in a bind at least you won't be wandering around a park buying from whacked out strangers.
I feel sorry for the kid, but he seriously lacked street smarts and plain common sense.
People should know that that this is NY, not Suburbia USA. As I said a while back, this is ROME 2008! This isn't Olathe, Kansas!
There are mentally unstable people out there with personality disorders, that's just life.
"Don't most dealers just come to you in NYC?"
For weed? I don't know, but theres a 24/7 snow delivery service in case you want to hit the slopes. Of course I wouldn't know anything about that.
This wouldn't of happened if he attended the school of hard knocks.
Re-institutionalize these psychos. Community Mental Health is a joke.
Too bad it will probably take 10 years to execute this scum...after the taxpayers spend millions keeping him in jail. I don't even think Kevin wanted drugs, it sounds like he was too drunk to do anything but pass out in bed. It is a shame one of his friends didn't personally take him home. Back in 1980 when I was 19 I was in an underground parking garage here in Los Angeles. These two men started walking towards me from the entrance, I jumped in my car and almost ran them both down as I left, streets smarts are something not everyone has. This is a shame, but all these sick jokes I see here only make you as bad as Cancel. It shows a huge lack of compassion and sensitivity to make jokes about murder victims.
I agree with you da90027
You are all basing your opinions on the statements of the animal that killed Kevin. The only facts we all know for sure are this, Kevin got drunk and was put in a cab by his friends. Then he was murdered by a predator. There were no drugs found at his apartment and there was no signs of sex. We do not know that went to Union Square for sure. That is what Cancel claims. He may have been right there at the apt and saw the opportunity to rob a drunk kid.
Okay, I work in mental health and I'm a friend of Kevin. While I see what schizophrenia does to a person when they are improperly medicated is horrific. But at the same time I am filled with rage and want nothing more than an eye for an eye.
Kevin was not all that clueless, but (although no one will forgive me for saying this)when intoxicated: he could be down right stupid.
I think the circumstances a horrible for the both of them, but still, I have no empathy for this man.