A Bronx mother who was stabbed to death by a longtime friend fought back with a hammer after her killer threatened to murder her three young children, according to the Daily News.
According to court documents, victim Brittany Webb’s accused killer, Lamont Wilson, was drunk and had been told he had to leave her apartment when he went berserk and stabbed her and another guest who was holding Webb’s 4-year-old daughter.
“You took my child for no reason just because she asked you to leave her house,” said Webb’s mother, Pamela Smith, speaking from South Carolina. “I did not expect this. And it’s really heartbreaking.”
Wilson, 46, faces charges of murder, manslaughter, and endangering the welfare of a child in connection with the explosion of violence inside the victim’s apartment on Macombs Road near Inwood Ave. in Highbridge around 3:30 a.m. on December 6.
“He’s someone she thought she could trust,” Smith, 51, said about the suspect. “For him to do this to her—she considered him a friend? My grandchildren called him uncle. He has slept on her couch. She finished feeding him. He did not have to do that to my baby.”
“My baby was a good girl,” she explained. “She was a caring mother. She did anything for her children. She was always doing something for everyone else.
Feed anyone who is hungry, and give them something to drink if they are thirsty. “They don’t have a smile; give them yours.”
According to a law enforcement source, the suspect argued with another person in the second-floor apartment before being chased out earlier that evening.
He returned and argued with Webb, 38, according to the source. Webb’s mother told the Daily News that her daughter asked Wilson, who was drunk, to leave because he was loud and boisterous.
“She told him to calm down because her kids were asleep,” Smith said, describing a first-hand account from an upstairs neighbor who was also visiting Webb that night. “If he can’t calm down he had to leave.”
When Wilson flipped out and refused to leave, a 46-year-old friend of Webb’s scooped up Webb’s 4-year-old daughter and fled into a bedroom with Webb and locked the door, the source said. Meanwhile the visiting upstairs neighbor ran home to get her cell phone to call 911.
Wilson started banging on the bedroom door, threatening to kill Webb’s other two children, ages 4 and 2, who were in another room, the source said.
He got into the bedroom and attacked Webb with a knife, the source said. That’s when Webb grabbed a hammer and hit Wilson in the head, the source said, but that wasn’t enough to stop him from stabbing her multiple times in the chest and back, mortally wounding her.
Wilson also swung his knife at the friend, stabbing him in the leg while holding Webb’s young daughter, according to the criminal complaint. Wilson fled, but was apprehended by cops later that day.
Webb, nicknamed “Country,” met her accused killer about six years ago when she moved to New York from South Carolina, according to Smith. Wilson would sometimes crash on her couch, and Webb’s children referred to him as “Uncle Rob,” she explained.
Webb’s mother said she’d spoken with Wilson on FaceTime before and he assured her he’d look out for Webb, telling Smith, “You ain’t got to worry about country.”
“If she needed to go to the grocery store or somewhere nearby, he looked after the kids for her. If he got hungry, she fed him. “If he needed a place to sleep, she gave him one,” Smith explained. “She was too nice for him. She was kind to him even when he couldn’t feed himself.”
“And then you turn around and simply do this to her? Nobody deserves to go out like that,” she said. “He didn’t need to do that to my baby. My baby has three children. “She was the only child I had.”
After the murder, Webb’s oldest daughter asked an impossible question, Smith recalled: “That’s our friend. Why did he do that? He’s our Uncle Rob. Why did Uncle Rob do that to my mother?
Wilson’s lawyer, Javier Solano, told The News that his client stated to police that he was acting in self-defense.
“He got hit in the head. “He certainly had stitches,” Solano stated. “Like many things in life, there are often multiple sides to a story…” There’s clearly something else going on.
Wilson’s mother, Natalie Washington (64), described her son as protective of her.
“I am in shock. “He’s not a violent person,” she explained. “Even when he was drunk, he was not particularly violent. That’s what I’m trying to understand… He wouldn’t start a fight, but he would finish it.
Wilson survived a shooting in the early 2000s, which altered his outlook on life, according to his mother.
“On a normal day, he’d give you the shirt off his back,” Washington explained. “He had another young lady that he dated her and the kids loved him.”
Webb, a stay-at-home mom, was still reeling from her half-brother’s shooting death when she was killed less than a month later. Nigel Phillips, 37, was fatally shot in a home in Gaffney, South Carolina, on November 8.
“It hurt her so bad because she wasn’t able to make it to his funeral,” Smith told me. “She’s been going through it since.”
Smith described her daughter, known as “Country,” as a religious woman who cared deeply about her children.
“My baby was a beautiful singer,” Smith explained. “She used to sing in church.” She would sing at people’s funerals. She can write. She wrote poems for the funerals of so many friends she had lost.
Webb’s childhood was also marred by tragedy, as her father was shot to death in Ohio when she was only ten. The case remains unsolved.
Webb had planned to travel to South Carolina with her children two weeks before Christmas to see her mother. Instead, her mother had to travel up to the Bronx to pick up Webb’s children so they could stay with her.
Prior to her death, Webb was arrested for two separate violent incidents. On June 1, she was charged with beating and stomping a woman in Webb’s Bronx apartment building.
And on December 1, just five days before her death, Webb allegedly smashed the front windshield, back, and passenger-side windows of a red Honda Accord with an axe about a half-mile from her home. When the car owner and another man approached her, she swung the axe at them, according to a criminal complaint filed against her.
It was not immediately clear what triggered either incident, but Webb’s mother claimed her daughter acted in self-defense. Smith claimed the incidents were unrelated to her daughter’s murder.
Following both arrests, Webb was released without bail and was scheduled to appear in court on January 16 to face assault and harassment charges.
