Lawyer: Suspect in boy's stabbing 'suffering' in jail

A Merrick man accused of stabbing an 8-year-old boy at a restaurant and arcade last fall was held on $1-million cash bail Wednesday despite his lawyer's pleas that he be released to a mental hospital.

A lawyer for Evan Sachs, 23, said his client is mentally ill and is "suffering" in the Nassau County Jail. If Sachs were released on bail, attorney Michael Soshnick, of Mineola, promised that Sachs' parents would immediately admit him to a psychiatric hospital.

Soshnick said his plea is especially urgent in light of a rash of recent suicides at the jail in East Meadow.

But Mitch Benson, who heads the Nassau district attorney's Major Offense Bureau, said in court that the facility that Soshnick proposed admitting Sachs to is not secure. He said Sachs is dangerous and cannot be entrusted to his parents' care.

"His parents didn't patrol him before," Benson told Nassau County Judge Jerald Carter. "He lived in their midst, and he'd been planning this for some time."

Prosecutors said Sachs walked up to the 8-year-old boy in the Dave & Buster's in Westbury on Oct. 8 and stabbed him five times in the back. When Sachs was arrested, police said, he was carrying a note that said he had planned an attack.

Carter Wednesday set bail at $2.5-million bond or $1-million cash, saying it is not his job to determine what is best for Sachs, but rather to ensure that Sachs appears in court to face the charges against him.

Sachs has been indicted on charges of second-degree attempted murder, first-degree and second-degree assault, and fourth-degree criminal possession of a weapon. If convicted, he faces up to 25 years in prison.

The boy, who suffered a punctured lung, was treated at a hospital and released.