Press Release

Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz announced today Wkorasky Voltaire, 30, has been sentenced to 19 years in prison for the May 2020 stabbing death of his half-brother in Queens Village, Queens.

District Attorney Katz said, “The sentence of the Court provides a measure of justice and punishes this defendant for ending his 22-year-old brother’s life in a brutal act of rage.”

Voltaire, of 138^th Avenue in the Laurelton neighborhood of Queens, was sentenced before Queens Supreme Court Justice Kenneth Holder yesterday after pleading guilty to manslaughter in the first degree earlier this month. Justice Holder sentenced Voltaire to 19 years in prison, to be followed by five years’ post release supervision.

According to Court records, shortly before 5 a.m. on May 14, 2020, the defendant met his brother, McKenzie Placide, at an uninhabited Queens Village house on 208^th Street where the pair once lived with their mother, who previously passed away. During an argument between the two men, Voltaire pulled out one of two kitchen knives he brought to the scene and stabbed his brother. At one point, the blade broke off and Placide was able to run from the house.

The District Attorney said Voltaire pursued his younger brother outside, caught up to the victim and repeatedly stabbed him with the second kitchen knife. Placide was stabbed a total of 137 times. Responding police rushed the victim to a local hospital. Before he died, the younger man told police that it was Voltaire who had attacked him.

Senior Assistant District Attorney Franchesca Basso, of the District Attorney’s Homicide Bureau, prosecuted the case, under the supervision of Assistant District Attorneys Peter J. McCormack III, Senior Deputy Bureau Chief, John W. Kosinski and Karen Ross, Deputy Bureau Chiefs, and under the overall supervision of Executive Assistant District Attorney for Major Crimes Daniel A. Saunders.