A brave Bronx mom was stabbed to death defending her daughter from a knife-wielding neighbor when an all-night Harlem house party turned violent early Tuesday, authorities said.
Michelle Kenny, 38, and her daughter, Tomiesha Abraham, 21, had gone to the north end of Central Park for a Fourth of July outdoor cookout with friends and family.
When it started raining, the people at the party decided to pack up their things and go to a ninth-floor apartment in a building on Malcolm X Blvd. near W. 115th St., arriving there about 11:30 p.m.
At some point, a woman — identified by sources as 26-year-old Ashanti Daniels — and a man came to the party, according to Abraham’s uncle Paul Davis, 43.
The man, whom cops later identified as Daniels’ boyfriend, Tyson Martin, 28, tried to flirt with Abraham, but she wasn’t interested, Davis said. A loud argument between Martin’s friends and Abraham’s family erupted in the hallway about 2 a.m.
Daniels became enraged and knocked Abraham to the floor, pulled a knife, and repeatedly stabbed her in the stomach and the arm, police said.
When Kenny tried to defend her daughter, Daniels stabbed the hero mom in the chest.
Paramedics took the two women to St. Luke’s Hospital, but Kenny could not be saved. Abraham was listed in stable condition Tuesday.
Daniels was charged late Tuesday with second-degree murder and attempted murder and fourth-degree criminal possession of a weapon. Cops said Martin punched Abraham, and he was charged with assault. Martin’s brother James was charged with assault, as well as tampering with evidence after he got rid of Daniels’ two knives, police said.
Pools of blood could be seen on the ninth floor and in the lobby after the fight, witnesses said. Dried blood was also smeared on the sidewalk in front of the building.
“We’re not doing good,” Kenny’s aunt Theresa Kenny said. “My niece was just murdered. I’m not feeling so hot.”
Davis said Kenny had two kids, Tomiesha and Thomas, and adored her husband of 24 years.
“They still were going out on dinner dates,” he said. “She never had a problem with anyone.”
He said Abraham is recovering at the hospital. “She’s getting better,” he said. “She’s talking. She’s going to make it.”
He and another relative said Abraham has a 2-year-old daughter, Sky.
Abraham “gets along with everyone,” he said.
The other relative, who did not want to be identified, called Kenny “an angel who was taken from us.”
“She was a mother protecting her child,” she said. “It was a deranged female who attacked (Abraham) over jealousy.”
But a 61-year-old neighbor of Daniels’ said she is known as “Sweetie.” “I was surprised because she’s such a sweet young girl,” she said, declining to give her name.
As of Monday, there have been 2,279 stabbings and slashings citywide this year, about a 10% increase over the 2,066 stabbings through the same period last year.
With NICOLE HENSLEY
