A savage brawl on the streets of Brooklyn in which one man was stabbed and another lost an eye was only the latest episode in a long-standing feud between the two neighbors, police and law enforcement sources said.
Jowan Latham, 46, and Eric Payne are both facing assault charges for Thursday’s bloody clash over a parking spot at Shepherd and New Lots Aves. in East New York, cops said. Payne, 38, was also hit with a weapons possession charge.
But the two had just clashed about a month earlier over the younger man’s motorcycle, officials said.
Cops arrested Latham back on Aug. 16 and charged him with criminal mischief after he wrecked Payne’s motorcycle a week earlier on Atkins Ave. near Pitkin Ave. in East New York about 3:00 p.m., according to the criminal complaint.
Payne stayed inside a nearby apartment as Latham yelled, “Come outside, I’m going to f— you up!” according to court documents. When Latham finally walked off, Payne stepped outside to find his motorcycle totaled.
A Brooklyn criminal court judge released Latham without bail at his Aug. 17 arraignment, court records show.
The pair’s feud escalated on Thursday morning in a nasty brawl over a parking spot that ended with Latham digging Payne’s eyeball out of its socket, cops said.
The two neighbors were arguing at Shepherd and New Lots Aves. at about 11:00 a.m., Payne stabbed Latham in the stomach. A woman accompanying Payne then doused the older man with pepper spray, cops said.
Payne and the woman hopped into a black Nissan Altima and sped off, but Latham chased after the pair in a beige Lexus — bleeding on his seat — for about three blocks to Elton St, where the chase ended as Latham rammed Payne’s sedan.
“I heard the sound of the wheels and the bang, the crash. The car went up on the sidewalk and hit a tree,” a 22-year-old witness told the Daily News. “The two guys get out and start screaming at one another.”
A moment later, the witness saw the two men sprinting down the street.
“One of them was stabbed, and he was running down the street bleeding, holding his side,” the witness said. “He was chasing the other guy. He was giving the sprint his all, chasing the other guy.”
Nearby resident, George Ylitalo, 35, told The News he’d gone outside to smoke a cigarette when he heard screeching tires in the distance before the two men came running up the street— one of them gushing blood.
During the foot chase, Payne ducked behind a parked car, only for Latham to leap atop the vehicle, Ylitalo said.
“This guy was determined to get the guy who stabbed him. I have to give it to him. The amount of blood that it looked like he had lost, it was just insane,” Ylitalo continued.
Payne tried to ward off Latham with a traffic cone, but he managed to evade the blow before tackling Payne below.
“The guy dodged it and got on top of him. He really was wailing on him,” said Ylitalo.
It was amid the beating that followed that Ylitalo heard a blood-curdling scream, which he realized only later was the wailing of a man whose eye had just been ripped from its socket.
“It wasn’t like a regular type of, ‘Ow ow, my face.’ I don’t really know how to explain it. It’s very rare you hear a man scream like that,” the witness said.
After gouging Payne’s eye, Latham got up and took a few steps before collapsing in the street.
Ylitalo applied pressure to the stab victim’s wound as his friend called 911 and onlookers recorded the carnage on their phones.
It was only after medics arrived that a police officer pointed out Payne’s eyeball, Ylitalo said.
“It was literally just lying on the sidewalk,” Ylitalo said. “It got to the point where the cop had to cover it with a hat, because people were going crazy trying to get photos of it.”
Medics took both men to Brookdale University Hospital, where they were in stable condition. Payne remained in the hospital Friday afternoon, cops said.
Their arraignments in Brooklyn Criminal Court were pending Friday.