Authorities say Edward Brown identified his alleged attacker before officers found his son walking nearby and later charged him with murder.
MASTIC, N.Y. — The homicide investigation that would lead to a second-degree murder indictment began with Edward Brown doing something simple and urgent: calling 911 from his Long Island apartment shortly after midnight and telling authorities that he had been stabbed.
Within roughly an hour, Brown was dead, emergency crews had converged on his Mastic Boulevard home and police had arrested his 33-year-old son, Sage Arias-Brown, on a nearby street. In the days that followed, investigators and prosecutors assembled a more detailed timeline using the emergency recording, a neighbor’s account, the location of the arrest, autopsy findings and physical evidence. Arias-Brown has pleaded not guilty, and the prosecution’s reconstruction remains an allegation that must be proven in court.
Suffolk County police place the beginning of the official response at approximately 12:30 a.m. Sept. 7. Brown, 69, called from his studio apartment and reported that he had been stabbed. Later accounts from prosecutors revealed that the call contained more than a report of an injury. They say Brown could be heard telling the dispatcher that he was being murdered and asking his son, by first name, what he was doing to him. The recording appears to have provided responding officers with both the seriousness of the emergency and an immediate lead on the alleged attacker.
At nearly the same time, another account was developing outside the emergency communications system. Prosecutors say a neighbor heard a loud bang inside or around Brown’s apartment, followed by screaming. The neighbor then allegedly saw Arias-Brown leave the residence several minutes after Brown placed the call. That witness account gave investigators a second source for reconstructing who was near the apartment and when. Public reports have not identified the neighbor by name, and no trial testimony from that witness has yet been reported.
Police and Mastic Volunteer Ambulance Company personnel entered the apartment and tried to save Brown. He was pronounced dead at the scene. Prosecutors later said a medical examination determined that he had suffered about 40 stab wounds. Although that finding described the severity of the attack, authorities did not release a verified motive or a detailed account of what the father and son were doing together before the violence allegedly began. That unanswered question remains separate from the timeline police say they can establish after the 911 call started.
The search for Arias-Brown did not extend far from Mastic Boulevard. Prosecutors said responding officers found him walking approximately half a mile from the crime scene. Newsday, citing a police spokesperson, reported that he was arrested on Hawthorne Street at 1:32 a.m. The timing placed the arrest about an hour after the initial call. At a later court appearance, a prosecutor said Arias-Brown had blood on his hands, clothing and backpack and had a cut on his hand when police encountered him.
Investigators also focused on the area immediately outside Brown’s apartment. Assistant District Attorney Melissa Grier said during Arias-Brown’s Sept. 17 arraignment that police recovered a bloodied knife from a garbage can outside the residence, according to Newsday. She said the weapon had been sent to the Suffolk County Crime Laboratory for analysis. The publicly available material reviewed for this report does not establish the final results of that testing, so the knife’s precise forensic significance remains unconfirmed in the public record.
The arrest on Sept. 7 initially produced a police charge of second-degree murder. Ten days later, the case returned to court in a different posture after a grand jury indictment. Arias-Brown pleaded not guilty before Acting State Supreme Court Justice Richard Horowitz. The judge ordered him held while the case proceeded. District Attorney Raymond A. Tierney said prosecutors believed Brown was trying to summon help while he was being attacked and characterized the killing as a particularly painful case involving a parent and child.
Defense attorney Katherine Fernandez used the arraignment to place several facts about her client on the record. She said Arias-Brown had documented mental health concerns, was receiving medication in custody and was able to understand the court proceedings. She also said he had no prior criminal convictions. Those statements have not been tied in public reporting to a specific legal defense, and no reliable source reviewed for this article established that a mental health condition caused the alleged attack. Arias-Brown remains entitled to contest each part of the prosecution’s evidence.
The police timeline also exists alongside another pending allegation involving Arias-Brown. In May, Suffolk County police charged him with third-degree robbery in connection with a TD Bank branch in Lake Ronkonkoma. Police said a man presented a teller with a note demanding cash and fled on foot. The murder and robbery allegations arise from separate events. The earlier charge had not resulted in a conviction when Fernandez discussed it in court, and it cannot be treated as proof of the later murder allegation.
For investigators, the central sequence is unusually compressed: an emergency call begins around 12:30 a.m.; a neighbor hears and sees activity linked by prosecutors to the same apartment; first responders find Brown mortally wounded; officers search the nearby area; and Arias-Brown is arrested a short distance away by 1:32 a.m. Prosecutors have supplemented that chronology with the alleged condition of his clothes and belongings, a recovered knife and the medical examiner’s findings. The defense will have the opportunity to test whether those pieces fit together as the state contends.
What the public record still does not answer is equally important. Authorities have not identified a confirmed motive. No publicly reviewed account describes a confession. The final laboratory analysis of the knife has not been published in the sources examined here, and a complete recording or transcript of the emergency call has not been made broadly available. Those gaps do not erase the evidence prosecutors have described, but they limit what can responsibly be stated before trial.
Reports in September said Arias-Brown faced 25 years to life if convicted and was scheduled to return to court Oct. 21. Reliable publicly indexed sources reviewed through Nov. 6 did not provide a confirmed update from that scheduled appearance. His latest independently verified status is therefore that he had pleaded not guilty and was ordered held while the murder prosecution remained pending.
Author note: Last updated November 6, 2026.