Three months ago, male model Dynus Saxon confidently strutted down the red carpet at the premiere of the superhero smash “Deadpool & Wolverine.” It was one of several red carpet rides the steely eyed, square-jawed stunner had made over the last few years as his modeling career blossomed.
He struck a far less assured pose late Friday as he stood quietly before a Bronx Criminal Court judge, accused of murder for stabbing a young father to death in a friend’s apartment.
Sporting a grimy, high-end brown sweater, nylon parachute pants and a large bandage over his right hand, the towering Saxon said nothing and appeared subdued as a judge ordered him held without bail.
Saxon, 20, is accused of fatally knifing Kadeem Grant in the neck and chest as his victim dozed on a couch in the small Mott Haven apartment on Grand Concourse near E. 144th St.
The model was visiting the apartment when he attacked Grant without any apparent provocation, police sources said.
Male model Dynus Saxon was arraigned in Bronx Criminal Court on Nov. 15 for a stabbing murder. (Kerry Burke/New York Daily News)
Saxon “got up and got a knife and went after the guy,” the tenant told police after the Nov. 10 attack.
Responding cops found Grant, 35, dead, the knife still sticking out of his chest.
Saxon was arrested at the scene. He was bleeding from a deep gash to his right hand that he incurred from repeatedly jamming the knife into Grant’s chest, prosecutors said.
He was briefly hospitalized and underwent a psychological evaluation before showing up at court with his injured hand conspicuously bandaged.
Cops charged him with murder, manslaughter and weapons possession. He’s expected to return to court and answer the charges on Dec. 3.
While in custody, Saxon’s first call was to his mother.
“I was his person that [Saxon] wanted to call from the hospital,” his mom, who didn’t share her name, told the Daily News Tuesday. “There’s a lot that it possibly could be and I just kind of got to wait to see what is said.”
Saxon couldn’t remember what happened when he spoke to his mother, she said.
As the Daily News reported in its Nov. 13 front-page story, Dynus Saxon’s stunned mother told the newspaper her son is “not an aggressor.” Saxon is charged with fatally stabbing a man as he was sleeping.
“I don’t know what happened, but I can tell y’all based on what I do know, that it’s not going to be as simple as you want to make it,” she said. “Dynus didn’t just decide to murder somebody.”
Neither Saxon nor Grant lived in the apartment where the killing took place. Saxon knows the tenant, who also knows Grant, police sources said.
Detectives believe at least two of the men were involved in a sexual relationship but it was unclear which two. Cops are investigating the possibility of a love triangle but also believe Saxon may have just snapped with no motive.
Saxon, of East Harlem, has appeared in Vogue Italia, L’Officiel Baltic and ad campaigns for Levi’s. After learning of his arrest, Dot Models New York, which represented Saxon, pulled his images off the company’s website.
Grant’s heartbroken father, who was traveling to New York from his home in Florida on Tuesday to deal with the tragedy, told The News his son had a 3-year-old daughter.
“He was just a loving kid who was there for his family and his daughter,” Christopher Grant said. “It’s just sad that she has to grow up without a father.”