An abused mother in Queens said she spent years in fear of her drug-addicted son, reaching a terrifying climax last month when he held a knife to her throat and threw her out a third-story window. .
Paraskevi Tsintseris, 64, who had endured a lifetime of beatings and abuse at the hands of her troubled 36-year-old son, reached a breaking point on Nov. 15 when she returned from checking her mail at her Astoria apartment. said. She told the Post she was waiting for him in the living room.
“I said, 'Get out,' and he said, 'No, I want to talk,'” Paraskevi said Wednesday from his hospital bed. “He had a knife in his hand. He said, 'Don't scream or I'll stab you.' He was destroying things…a picture frame of a photo with my daughter. He didn't want to leave. He got angry and started chasing me in the living room area.
“He was hurting me with the back of a knife. He forced me to go to the bedroom. He took my cell phone and the house phone so I couldn't call for help. I did,” she said. “He was smoking drugs in the house and was spraying it in my face. I was scared of him.
“He said to me, 'Fuck you.'” He held a knife to my neck. ”
Then it got even worse.
“He pushed me against the window ledge. He held a knife to my neck,” she said. “I told him, I want to go to the bathroom, I want water. He said no. I asked him for an asthma pump and he said no. “What? See what happens. No one will know what happened.'
“He pushed me hard with his hands. I don't know what happened after that. I don't remember. When I woke up, I was in the hospital. My daughter came. She told me that I was in the hospital. I said yes,” Paraskevi said. “When he pushed me, he thought I was going to die. When I saw the knife, I thought I was going to die too. I was no match for him. I wasn't alive. I’m lucky to have it.”
She suffered serious injuries, including a brain hemorrhage, a fractured left shoulder and left arm, injuries to her right arm, and multiple facial fractures. She now has a rod and six screws in her left leg, needs to walk with a cane and may need further surgery.
Despite his history of abuse, Paraskevi said she still worries about her son and once sent him to rehab in Vermont.
“I give him food, I give him this, I give him that. What else was I supposed to do? I was scared of him,” she said. “Wherever you put the devil, it's still the devil. I apologize for my words.”
After miraculously surviving a three-story fall, she was freed by her son, George Tsintseris. He is currently being held at Rikers Island without bail on charges of attempted murder and assault.
The suspect told police that his mother “fell” out of a window several miles away from their apartment, but police rejected this claim, as did his mother and sister.
During the horrifying November 15 incident, he also forced his mother to call her sister, Argiro Tsintezelis, at knifepoint and extort money.
“I heard him whispering in the background, 'Tell her I need help. Tell her I need money,'” Argillo, 39, said. “My mother was saying, ‘Help me, bring me the money.’ He’s holding a knife to my throat.”
“At first I didn't want to believe it. He's my brother,” she said. “She's just being nice to him. Imagine having a child that you took care of…and that child tried to kill you.”
She said when she heard what happened, she thought her mother had died.
“She went to the hospital missing. She didn't have any identification. We had to look for her,” Argillo said. “I panicked. I was about to call the morgue.”
George Tsintselis is scheduled to return to the Queen's court in March. A public defender representing him did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Post.
Meanwhile, Paraskevi Tsintseris said she was still haunted by her son's near-fatal assault and described horrifying nightmares about the incident.
“I think his hand is still on my face,” she said. “I saw him in the closet. I saw him on top of me with a knife.”
