NEW YORK (CMC):

Police and relatives here say that a Guyanese man on Sunday went berserk, killing his compatriot church-going wife with a kitchen knife, nearly decapitating her.

Police said Ian Robinson, 58, attacked Hazel Robinson, 51, at their home in front of their four-year-old grandson.

Police said they have charged Robinson with murder and criminal possession of a weapon. They said he had no prior arrests and that there had been no previous reports of domestic abuse at the couple's home.

They said he stabbed his wife in the neck, partially severing her head.

"It was gruesome," said Lydon Laing, Hazel Robinson's brother, adding that the grandson had witnessed everything.

"She is a very hard-working person, very Christian-like," Laing said of his sister, still referring to her in the present tense.

Mrs Robinson worked at the Salvation Army in the Bronx and was a devoted parishioner at the Christian Cultural Centre in East New York section of Brooklyn, he said.

Laing said the couple wed about 12 years ago in their native Guyana.