Police: Wheelchair-bound Brooklyn man douses daughter with acid, claims she was abusing him

Neighbors in East New York look on in disbelief as Darlene Lynch sprints from apartment with her skin and clothes smoking. Sources say Jerome Lynch, 69, splashed daughter with a drain cleaner

Jerome Lynch is carted off to jail after police and witnesses say he splashed his daughter with acid.


A wheelchair-bound man who claimed his daughter had been abusing him doused her with acid Saturday — a savage attack in Brooklyn that caused the skin to peel from her face, cops and witnesses said.

Darlene Lynch, 49, sprinted from her Schenck Ave. apartment about 1:40 p.m. Her skin and clothes were smoking. She was screaming for help.

“My father did this!” Lynch wailed as her clothes disintegrated off of her body, leaving her nearly naked in the street.

Neighbors at the Boulevard Houses in East New York looked on in disbelief.

“You could see the smoke coming off her body,” Clarissa Shakespeare said. “Everyone was just traumatized and scared. Her skin looked like melting wax. And then her whole eye lid was melted. The whole left side from her face all the way down to her feet.”

Sources said the victim’s dad, Jerome Lynch, 69, splashed his daughter with a drain cleaner, El Diablo — which is 98% sulfuric acid.

“She was hollering,” said witness Lisa Jones, 49. “I heard the screaming and I just saw her there peeling. One side was peeled off and everyone took her clothes off and was pouring water on her.”

One neighbor covered her in a sheet.

Police at the scene of savage acid attack in East New York, Brooklyn.

“It was just horrible. I was just stuck — I didn’t know what to do or how to react. Someone said, ‘Go get her a sheet.’ So, I snapped out of it.”

Ateam of EMTs soon arrived and began treating Lynch. She was rushed to New York Presbyterian Hospital, where she was placed in a burn unit. She was expected to survive.

After the woman was taken to the hospital, cops cuffed the father to his wheelchair and pushed him out of the first-floor apartment.

“Uncle Jerome, you know you’re gonna be arrested,” said his niece, Celeste Lynch, as he rolled by.

Jerome Lynch, wearing blue jeans and a white T-shirt, stared off for a few seconds before responding: “I know.”

“She’s hurt real bad,” his niece said, shaking her head. “You hurt her real bad.”

The elderly man was taken to a nearby police station, where he was charged with felony assault.

Jerome — who has trouble speaking since a stroke two years ago — admitted to the attack in a note he wrote to cops, sources said.

“He said she had been abusing him,” a source said.

Sources say Lynch doused his daughter Darlene Lynch with a drain cleaner called El Diablo.

It was not immediately clear how Jerome Lynch claimed he had been abused, but relatives said he’s become delusional in recent years.