Jerome Lynch Acid Attack: NY Man, 69, Douses Daughter With Acid [Video]

Authorities in New York have arrested a 69-year-old man after he reportedly poured acid on his 49-year-old daughter’s face.

According to the NY Daily News, Jerome Lynch of Brooklyn threw a cup of El Diablo drain cleaner (which is 98 percent sulfuric acid) onto his 49-year-old daughter Darlene. Police say the horrific attack happened inside Jerome’s ground floor apartment on Saturday around 1:40 pm.

After being doused by the corrosive substance, Darlene ran outside as her clothes disintegrated and her skin fell from her face, witnesses said.

“You could see the smoke coming off her body,” one witness, Clarissa Shakespeare, told the newspaper. “Everyone was just traumatized and scared. Her skin looked like melting wax.”

Following the attack, Darlene, who had been the main caregiver for her father, was taken to New York Presbyterian Hospital, where she was placed in a burn unit; she is expected to survive but may lose her left eye, according to the Daily.

Jerome — who has trouble speaking since a stroke two years ago — admitted to the attack in a note he wrote to cops, adding that his daughter had been abusing him in recent days. He was arrested and charged with assault shortly thereafter.

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

“He was losing his mind,” his niece Dominique Goodwin told the Daily. “(Darlene is) asking why her father did this. She doesn’t understand.”

While some relatives are shocked, saying such an attack seems out of place with Jerome’s “laughing and smiling” nature, neighbors recall a more sinister side.

“[Mr. Lynch] would sometimes pour bleach and ammonia in the hallway of his building to stop kids from playing inside,” Shakespeare told the paper.

ABC7 has more on Darlene Lynch’s tragic acid attack in the video below: