A TikToker who’s been trolled on social media and harassed following his arrest for sexually abusing a young girl has been charged with fatally stabbing a 17-year-old high school student.
Andrew Tollinche, 22, was fending off a group of teens harassing him outside his apartment building on Beach Ave. near McGraw Ave. in Soundview around 4:34 p.m. Wednesday when Jonathan “J.J.” Melo happpened to roll by on a scooter, polcie said. Melo was not part of the group harassing Tollinche, law enforcement sources confirmed.
The TikToker stabbed the teen in the back as he slowed down to see what was going on.
“My child, Jonathan, did not know this guy at all. There was no beef,” Melo’s mother, Raquel Melo, told the Daily News Friday. “They just happened to be passing by and the guy was upset. He’s been antagonized by kids that have been terrorizing him.”
Tollinche, who goes by the handle DGB on TikTok, was arrested Sept. 18 and charged with rape, sexual abuse and endangering the welfare of a child for trying to have sex with an 11-year-old girl. During Tollinche’s arraignment in the sex abuse case, the Bronx District Attorney’s Office requested he be held on $75,000 bail, but a judge gave him supervised release and ordered he wear an ankle monitor.
Word of Tollinche’s arrest spread both online and throughout his neighborhood, catching the attention of area teens. When the teens were not harassing him on social media, they would sneak into his building and bang on his apartment door, startling both him and his mother, law enforcement sources confirmed.
Cops had been called to his home, and Tollinche recorded a few of these incidents and his interactions with police, which he posted on TikTok.
On Wednesday, the teens returned and began banging on his door. Tollinche’s mom confronted them with a broom, chasing them away, a law enforcement source said. A few minutes later, Tollinche came out, confronted a few of the teens, and stabbed Melo. The data from his ankle monitor helped detectives place Tollinche at the scene, law enforcement sources said.
“I don’t know if this guy had had enough already from all the kids that were knocking on his door doing crazy stuff, and he said today’s the day I’m going to retaliate, but he pulled out a knife,” Raquel Melo said after hearing a firsthand account from her nephew, who was with her son when he was stabbed.
Courtesy of family
Jonathan Melo with his mother Raquel Melo. (Courtesy of family)
Melo, his nephew and a friend were all riding stand-up electric scooters past Tollinche’s home when the attack took place.
Raquel’s nephew, who was riding ahead of the other two boys, first spotted Tollinche and realized he was armed, she said. “My nephew tells the others in the back, ‘He has a knife!’,” Melo said. She said her son and and his friend stopped their scooters, but then quickly tried to flee, his mother said.
“My son stepped off the scooter to see, because he couldn’t see his cousin,” she said. “He’s the last of them to get back on the scooter. (Tollinche) moved really quick, and all he could do was stab my son in the back while he’s trying to run off.”
Melo was rushed to Jacobi Medical Center, but doctors were unable to save him. When she was first alerted to the incident, her son was stable, but his condition worsened at the hospital.
Melo, a senior at AECI Charter High School in the South Bronx, wanted to embark on a career in real estate and would have turned 18 on July 19. But his entire focus was on his upcoming graduation in June — especially his prom with his girlfriend, Gigi, his mother said.
“They had some nice green matching outfits,” she recalled fondly. “They had been dating since, I believe, last year in October or November. She’s a senior, as well, but she goes to high school upstate somewhere. Really good girl. Good head on her shoulders.”
“(She’s) very distraught, as well,” she said of the girlfriend.
Courtesy of family
Jonathan “JJ” Melo. (Courtesy of family)
Cops arrested Tollinche on Thursday night, charging him with murder, manslaughter and weapons possession.
Sporting a ponytail and a black hoodie, Tollinche was ordered held without bail.
“The defendant was at liberty on an ankle monitor on an open rape in the first degree case here in the Bronx, and appears before this court today, now charged with murder in the second degree,” prosecutors said. They added that the murder weapon was recovered in Tollinche’s home as cops executed a search warrant Thursday.
His attorney, Edgar DeLeon, had no problem with his client being held without bail, citing the harassment he’s receiving at home.
DeLeon said he couldn’t say if “Mr. Tollinche knew the deceased at all.”
“The case has its many nuances that will reveal themselves throughout the process,” the attorney said. “I think the press is well aware a lot of information has been placed on TikTok, so there’s a lot of stuff to go through there. He has the full support of his family, and he also has the support of people in the community, apparently, from what I’ve heard.”
“I’m glad that they have him in custody,” Raquel Melo said of the arrest.
“You’re gonna pay,” she added, referring to Tollinche. “There’s gonna be justice. You’re gonna pay and I hope that you rot in prison.”