Daughter confesses to fatally stabbing dad and wounding sister in Brooklyn attack after initially blaming home intruders, sources say

A savage pre-dawn stabbing killed a Brooklyn dad and left his teen daughter fighting for her life Thursday — with her older sibling charged after confessing to the attack inside the family apartment, according to the NYPD.

Nikki Secondino, 22, initially blamed the carnage on a pair of home invaders who burst inside at 5:50 a.m. before the killing of her 61-year-old father Carlo and the stabbing of 19-year-old Liana, police sources said.

By Thursday evening, after parts of the story failed to add up, Nikki admitted to the crime, according to sources. Police charged her with murder, attempted murder and criminal possession of a weapon.

Detectives were still investigating what led to the violent rampage.

A 61-year-old neighbor, who asked not to be identified, was the first in the Bensonhurst building to respond to the father’s calls for help. She saw blood spattered all over the hallway and heard the dad’s dying screams in the hours before sunrise.

“I heard like wrestling, fighting,” said the neighbor. “I did hear the father. He pleaded to me ‘Please call the cops!’ ... The front of his chest right there, it was saturated in red like he was wearing a red vest.”

Nikki banged on the woman’s door in an attempt to get her to come out.

“‘Oh my god! Oh my god! Open up the door!’” she recalled Nikki screaming as she furiously knocked on the door. “But I saw the blood in the hallway so I immediately closed my door and I didn’t want to get involved.”

The terrified woman called 911 and waited in her locked apartment.

“He was just like lying there,” she added. “His head was facing towards the window, the kitchen window. He was face up lying on his back.”

The woman described a contentious relationship between the dad and oldest daughter Nikki, who is transgender, and recalled the flood of police officers after she dialed 911.

“Every time when they argue there was banging,” the neighbor said. “Because the walls are just sheetrock, I would hear everything.”

The father was pronounced dead at the scene, while both girls were hospitalized — the youngest in critical condition from her stab wounds, a source said.

Nikki initially told police that black-clad intruders, a white man and a black man, fled the crime scene. Cops began a search for the suspects before her story fell apart and she became a suspect, police sources said.

A window inside the home was broken from the inside, contradicting the tale of a robbery gone wrong, according to the police source at the scene. And there was no sign of forced entry inside the apartment above a plumbing shop on 17th Ave. near 82nd St.

Detectives found no video surveillance outside the home that supported the home invasion account and Nikki had cuts on her hand that was consistent with a knife slipping during the stabbing, sources said.

There was no large amount of cash or any drugs found at the crime scene and the victims have no criminal records, the sources said.

Yadira Gomez, 47, who worked with the dad at her local diner, recalled the father and the oldest girl butting heads repeatedly despite his support of her gender change.

“He will just tell you, ‘She’s crazy, she’s fighting all the time,” said Gomez. “Like she’s all the time fighting ... He would just say she has problems.”

Others said that the conflicts appeared to turn violent at times.

“Domestic problems,” said Joe Pagano, 53, who works at a pest control business near the victims’ apartment. “I’m talking black eyes .... It’s such a shame that this happened. But who knows what really happened?”

According to Pagano, the family moved into the neighborhood at least a decade earlier. Neighbors described the dad as a deliveryman for a local diner and a one-time worker at a neighborhood restaurant.

By many accounts, Nikki and her father had a complicated relationship.

.Social media posts by Carlo indicate that he was a strong supporter of former President Donald Trump, who was an outspoken critic of the transgender community. Just weeks into his presidency he rolled back Obama-era guidance on allowing transgender students to use bathrooms of their choice.

However, in a nearly two-hour interview posted to YouTube about her transition, Nikki said her father supported her transition.

“He was there to take care of her after the surgery,” their neighbor told the Daily News.

According to family friends, Nikki’s father paid for gender reassignment surgery two years ago.

“He supported her 100%,” said Gomez. “That’s his daughter: ‘Whatever you want to do, I’ll support you.’”

Nikki said nothing to reporters as she was led from Bensonhurst’s 62nd precinct late Wednesday night. Her arraignment in Brooklyn Criminal Court is pending.