Deer Park woman gets 18 years for explosive attack on boyfriend

Keyonna Waddell, 35, of Deer Park, was sentenced to 18 years in prison and five years of post-release supervision for a March 2024 explosion that left her boyfriend permanently maimed in his own bedroom.

Waddell was convicted on April 24, 2026, after a jury trial in Suffolk County Supreme Court on charges of first-degree assault and first-degree criminal possession of a weapon. Supreme Court Justice Richard I. Horowitz imposed the sentence on May 27, 2026. Prosecutors said she had faced up to 25 years in prison.

The attack unfolded after an argument inside the victim’s apartment on March 22, 2024. Prosecutors said the victim told Waddell to leave, then later went to bed. He woke to a hissing sound and a flame on the bedroom floor and saw what was described at trial as a stick of dynamite. He tried to put it out, then tried to throw it out the window, but it detonated in his hand. After the blast, he ran to the end of the driveway and saw Waddell fleeing on foot. Police arrested her the next day.

The victim was taken to Nassau University Medical Center, where doctors amputated the remainder of his hand and part of his arm. Investigators later learned that Waddell had threatened him with dynamite several times in the months before the attack, a warning sign that prosecutors said showed the violence was not spontaneous but the end point of an escalating pattern.

Suffolk County District Attorney Raymond A. Tierney said the sentence delivered justice for a survivor of an act of domestic violence in his own home and underscored how quickly abuse can turn deadly. The case was prosecuted by Assistant District Attorneys Dana Castaldo and Jacob DeLauter, with assistance from Assistant District Attorney Carlos Benitez. Detective John Caraccia of the Suffolk County Police Department’s First Squad conducted the investigation, with help from DA research analysts Thomas Kolacki and Brooke Baade. Waddell was represented by Eric Besso, Esq.

The case also lands in a county already confronting a heavy volume of domestic-violence calls. Suffolk County officials said the county’s 911 system received 27,000 domestic-violence reports in 2024, and more than 280,000 such incidents were reported over the last decade. County leaders have tied that toll to the Suffolk County Alliance Against Domestic Violence, part of a broader prevention effort meant to catch dangerous patterns before they become catastrophic injuries like the one seen in Deer Park.