14 DAY TRIAL // The step-granddaughter of Hollywood actor Morgan Freeman, E’Dena Hines, has been stabbed to death outside her apartment in Manhattan, New York City, by her live-in boyfriend who, in a drugged stupor, thought he was performing an exorcism.
Police sources tell the New York Post that Hines was stabbed 18 times, and that the boyfriend, identified as Lamar Davenport, was still making a “stabbing motion” by the time cops arrived and pried him off Hines’ body on the pavement.
Davenport was “performing an exorcism”
Eyewitnesses reveal for the publication that Davenport started chasing Hines on the pavement at about 3 o’clock in the morning. One of them, who saw her go down and him stab her repeatedly, called the police and told them to hurry.
He claims he heard Davenport yell something about casting demons out of Hines’ body and Jesus Christ being “born” in the act. He also says that he continued stabbing the body long after it went lifeless. When the cops removed him from the scene, he no longer had the knife in his hand, but he was still making the motion of stabbing.
He seemed unaware of what he had done. He has been taken in for a psychiatric evaluation and, as of the time of writing, he is yet to be charged with anything.
Davenport was in a “drug-induced psychosis,” police sources reveal.
“Davenport - an actor and rapper wannabe whose nickname is ‘Lyric” - abuses cocaine, pot and booze, and has two young children, according to law-enforcement sources,” the NY Post says. “He has six prior arrests, including for marijuana and petty larceny, the sources added.”
A casual night out
The same report says that Davenport and Hines had had dinner out with a good friend just hours before the attack and that there was nothing out of the ordinary about them.
In fact, the friend says, Hines seemed happier than he’d ever seen her, and she and Davenport looked in love. There were no red flags for behavior that might have predicted, even in the slightest, such an outburst.
In a statement to the media, Freeman confirms that it was his step-granddaughter who was killed, saying “Her star will continue to shine bright in our hearts, thoughts and prayers. May she rest in peace.”
Hines was an actress and she often accompanied Freeman on the red carpet. She was the granddaughter of his first wife, and in 2009 reports said that she and the actor were in a relationship. It took Freeman 3 years to deny those rumors, saying they were untruthful and hurtful, because nothing inappropriate had ever occurred between the two. At the time the reports emerged, he was 72 and she was 27.