The 63-year-old man killed at a supportive housing program on Creedmoor Psychiatric Center’s campus in Queens was lovingly involved with a community of devoted longtime friends, even after his mental illness took him from facility to facility in his later years. “He was part of the family, he really was,” said Louis Giulietti, 69, of victim Ronald Giacopelli, noting Giacopelli was always present for family birthdays. “How we used to tease him when he showed up for the cake.” Those friends are now left angry, confused and with a stinging loss. “I’ve got to know Ron 36, 37 years,” said Giulietti. “He was like a brother to me really.” Giacopelli, who grew up in Fresh Meadows and had been a resident of Hazel House, a 52-bed mental health facility at Creedmoor, was found face down on the floor in the room of his 23-year-old friend and fellow patient David Zheng Jan. 20, police sources said. When cops responded to the facility on Winchester Blvd. in Queens Village, they found Giacopelli had been stabbed multiple times in the back of the neck and lower back. Zheng was taken into custody for questioning but “has no recollection whatsoever about what happened [the previous] night,” a police source said. The city medical examiner’s office later determined the cause of death to be strangulation, and Zheng was charged with murder, tampering with physical evidence and criminal possession of a weapon, according to a criminal complaint. He pleaded not guilty to the charges. Zheng was ordered held without bail by a judge, but the Department of Correction would not say where he is being housed. The Hazel House in the Creedmoor Psychiatric Center in Queens is pictured on Jan. 20, 2025. (Kerry Burke / New York Daily News) Giulietti and other friends are stunned by the fate suffered by Giacopelli, who they describe as generous, fun-loving and kind-hearted. “It’s killing me right now because he was such a good friend. My whole family is devastated about it, to think of how he had to go out — forget about it,” said Giulietti. Michael Parmigiani, 66, grew up across the street from Giacopelli and remembered frequent trips to Peck Park in Fresh Meadows to play a variety of sports, but especially paddle ball. “We were quite a team together,” said Parmigiani. The friends later attended Francis Lewis High School together, but hadn’t seen each other in over five years, after Parmigiani moved out of the city. “I was so sorry to hear what happened to him,” said Parmigiani. “It broke my heart.” When he was younger Giacopelli trained to work for Merrill Lynch, said friends, but later began to work with Giulietti’s brother in the steam division at Con Edison, where he remained for nine years. The victim went on to work as a landscaper and home health aide, and had taken care of his mother before her death in 2011. The body of Ronald Giacopelli is removed from Hazel House in the Creedmoor psychiatric facility in Queens on Jan. 20, 2025. (Kerry Burke / New York Daily News) Giacopelli suffered from anxiety and depression, friends told the Daily News, and after his mother died his mental health took a turn for the worse. He stayed living in her house for six months, sometimes opening his home to roommates who were down on their luck. “He took some people off the streets,” said Giulietti. “He took some guy in his house, the guy and his wife and his dog.” The couple ended up leaving and abandoning the dog, a pit bull named Bricks, who soon became Giacopelli’s close companion. “He fell in love with the dog and the dog loved him,” said Giulietti, remembering the lengths Giocopelli went to for his pet. “He totaled his car going to look for the dog because the dog ran away. He found the dog a mile away.” Giacopelli later lived with his brother until his brother moved to California, said Giulietti, and ended up at Creedmoor for about a month before transitioning to Hazel House, where he had been for several years. Giulietti said his friend could be intense, calling those close to him over 10 times a day, but he didn’t mind. “For me it didn’t matter to me, I talked to him three, four times a day,” said Giulietti. ”He might have been a little loopy but he was a good guy.” Molly Stephen was brutally beat at Queens halfway houseStephen Barcelo for New York Daily NewsCreedmoor Psychiatric Center. (Stephen Barcelo for New York Daily News) Giacopelli was still social with his old friends while he lived at the inpatient facility, but in the last few months his mental illness seemed to overwhelm him, preventing him from leaving the grounds. “I would offer to pick him up and do something. I would call him and say ‘I’m on my way’, but he wouldn’t really want to go out. I guess his anxiety or whatever was too much,” said Giulietti. “Every day I spoke to him while he was there. Towards the end, the last five or six months, since this kid David came around, he never called me,” said Giulietti of Giacopelli’s accused killer. Zheng had previously tampered with the victim’s phone, increasing his isolation, said Giulietti. “He said [Zheng] was taking his phone and doing something so he couldn’t call me. I would call and I would call and he didn’t answer. “The last time I spoke to him was Friday night and he did call me Saturday but I didn’t see the call, and I called him back Sunday. All of a sudden his brother called me Monday morning and told me ‘my brother was killed’ … I thought it was a joke.” Other residents at Hazel House were just as shocked as the victim’s longtime friends. “They seemed to be very happy,” 54-year-old Hazel House resident Shannon Sumpter said of Giacopelli and Zheng after the murder. “They were good friends, but David didn’t take his medication. They were always calling him over the loudspeaker to come and get it.” “I was there when they handcuffed David,” Sumpter said. “When the police brought him out, he looked like nothing happened, like it was all normal.” A spokesman with the state’s Office of Mental Health said the agency is “fully cooperating with the NYPD’s investigation and will review the circumstances that led to this tragic event.” Giacopelli’s funeral, a graveside service, was held in Farmingdale on Friday, the same day Zheng returned to Queens Criminal Court. With Rocco Parascandola