Elderly DC man Steven Schwartz stabbed wife to death in fight over pancakes: officials

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By Katherine Donlevy

An elderly DC man stabbed his wife to death because he didn’t want to eat pancakes she made for him, officials announced Friday.

Steven Schwartz, 85, allegedly plunged the carving knife into 81-year-old Sharron Hilda Schwartz’s back in their northwest DC home Sunday after she tried pushing the sweet breakfast item on him to help him gain weight, according to a federal criminal complaint.

“I killed her, Oh my Lord. I don’t remember it was a crazy fight!” Schwartz allegedly said while sitting in the back of a police cruiser.

The accused killer told detectives he had lost up to 50 pounds during a recent hospital stay due to physical and psychiatric disorders and that Sharron was trying to get his weight back up.

Schwartz described his wife as a “bit of a taskmaster,” but admitted she was doing it because she “loved him so much that [she] wanted him to be well and that she wanted her partner and protector back,” the documents state.

Sharron reportedly pushed the pancakes on him after learning he wasn’t planning to eat breakfast because he had eaten a quarter of a Krispy Kreme doughnut the day before.

Schwartz relented, but quickly changed his mind — sparking the deadly argument.

“The next thing [he] heard was a plate crashing against the wall,” the affidavit says.

That’s when Schwartz allegedly grabbed a carving knife from a butcher’s block and sank it into Sharron’s back.

The neighbors heard screams coming from inside the home and called the couple’s son, who was forced to push his mother’s body out of the way to get inside the home when he arrived just minutes later.

“I stabbed her and then myself,” Schwartz reportedly told his son before handing over a knife.

When police arrived, Schwartz had grabbed hold of another knife and was holding it against his abdomen, the documents claim.

After puncturing himself, officers deployed a Taser and disarmed Schwartz before placing him under arrest.

Both he and his wife were rushed to the hospital, where Sharron was announced deceased.

An autopsy report later found she was stabbed once in the back and the blade pierced her heart. 

“I want to die so bad … I can’t stand food and she was making me eat and we fought. She screamed and she threw it at me. I have two diagnoses, depression and eating diversion. What happened, what exactly happened,” Schwartz allegedly told cops.

“She doesn’t deserve this, I deserve it, she does not.”

Schwartz was released from the hospital and arrested Thursday for second-degree murder while armed, federal prosecutors announced.

“Defendant did not want to eat the pancakes she made and stabbed her in the back,” the US Attorney for the District of Columbia said in a release.

He pleaded not guilty to the crime, despite his alleged admissions in the moments following the crime.

Schwartz was remanded without bond.