A Staten Island mom was stabbed to death outside the NYCHA building where she lived during a wild brawl involving about 20 women — and her 12-year-old daughter, cops and neighbors said Wednesday.
Jennira Roundtree, 43, was knifed twice during the melee outside the West Brighton Houses on Henderson Ave. near Broadway about 7:35 p.m. Tuesday, cops said.
A neighbor heard a group of girls picking a fight with Roundtree’s daughter and believes Roundtree died defending her.
Before Roundtree apparently intervened, friends of her daughter ran into the building to summon her older sister for help, according to neigbors.
“Some girls come in to fight with the little girl and some friends they go upstairs and then the sister was coming,” said the 30-old-neighbor. “I don’t know where her mom came from. Maybe she was outside (already).”
Scaffolding obscured the neighbor’s vision but that she could hear everything.
“A friend of the (victim’s 12-year-old daughter) runs away to the building, to like let (the victim’s older daughter) know about her sister. The sister comes and she starts fighting with the girls,” said the neighbor.
“When I see the sister fighting I said ‘Let me go downstairs’ because I know those kids. There were a lot of people fighting.”
By the time she got downstairs Roundtree was on the ground.
“The police took her,” she said. “When they carried her, I saw she had a lot of blood. I heard her say, ‘I can’t breathe!’ That’s the only thing she said.”
“I think it’s around over here,” she said of the victim’s visible wound, pointing to an area under her chest.
Medics rushed Roundtree to Richmond University Medical Center but she could not be saved.
The knife used to kill her was recovered at the scene, police said. Cops said the victim was also slashed with an umbrella.
There were no immediate arrests.
Cops said Roundtree had seven prior arrests and 10 domestic incident reports. It wasn’t clear if she was a victim or perpetrator in the domestic incident reports, which often involve fights or other disturbances.
“This is not the time to speak right now,” a distraught woman who answered the door at Roundtree’s apartment told the Daily News. “She was a great mother… and she lost her life.”
Neighbors said Roundtree was the mother of two older boys in addition to the two daughters and worked security.
“I saw her earlier yesterday,” the neighbor said Wednesday. “She was in the front of the building with the little one, around like 4:25 p.m. I can’t sleep. I can’t believe this happened.”
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