Bronx mom fatally stabbed in her home fought back with a hammer, as killer threatened kids

A Bronx mom stabbed to death by a longtime friend fought back with a hammer as her killer threatened to murder her three young children, the Daily News has learned.

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, according to court papers.

“You took my child for no reason just because she asked you to leave her house,” Webb’s mother, Pamela Smith, said from South Carolina. “I didn’t expect this. And it’s so heartbreaking.”

Wilson is charged with murder, manslaughter and endangering the welfare of a child for the explosion of violence inside the victim’s apartment on Macombs Road near Inwood Ave. in Highbridge about 3:30 a.m. Dec. 6.

“He’s somebody that she thought she could trust,” Smith, 51, said of the suspect. “For him to do this to her— she called him friend? My baby’s (grandkids) called him uncle. He done slept on her couch. She done fed him. He didn’t have to do that to my baby.”

“My baby was a good girl,” she added. “She was a caring mother. She did anything for her kids. She was always doing things for everybody else. To feed anybody if they hungry, give them something to drink if they thirsty. They ain’t got a smile, give them yours.”

A law enforcement source said the suspect argued with another person in the second-floor apartment and was chased out earlier in the evening. He returned and got into an argument with Webb, the source said. Webb’s mother told the Daily News her daughter asked a drunken Wilson 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 as he held Webb’s young daughter, the criminal complaint alleges. Wilson fled but was nabbed by cops later in the day.

Webb, who was nicknamed “Country,” met her accused killer about six years ago when she moved to New York from South Carolina, Smith said. Wilson sometimes crashed on her couch and Webb’s children knew him as “Uncle Rob,” she said.

Webb’s mom said she’d spoken to Wilson on FaceTime in the past and he assured her he’d look out for Webb, telling Smith, “You ain’t got to worry about Country.”

“If she need to the grocery store or somewhere around, he watched the kids for her while she went to the grocery store. If he was hungry, she fed him. If he needed somewhere to sleep, she gave him somewhere to sleep,” Smith said. “She was too good for him. She was good to him when he couldn’t even feed his self.”

“And then you turn around and you just do this to her? Nobody deserve to go out like that,” she added. “He didn’t have to do that to my baby. My baby got three kids. She was the only child I had.”

After the murder, Webb’s oldest daughter had an impossible question, Smith recounted: “That’s our friend. Why’d he do that? He’s our uncle Rob. Why did Uncle Rob do that to my mom?”

Wilson’s lawyer, Javier Solano, told The News his client made a statement to police that he was acting in self defense.

“He was hit in the head. He certainly had stitches,” Solano said. “Like many things in life, there are usually different sides to the story, sometimes multiple sides to the story…. There clearly is something else going on.”

Wilson’s mother, Natalie Washington, 64, described her son as protective of her.

“I’m in shock. He’s not a violent person,” she said. “Even when he drinks he wasn’t really violent. That’s what I’m trying to wrap my head around…. He would not start a fight, but he would finish one.”

Wilson survived a shooting in the early 2000s, and that changed his outlook on life, his mother said.

“On a normal day for him he’d give you the shirt off his back,” Washington said. “He had another young lady that he dated her and the kids loved him.”

Webb, a stay-at-home mom, was still reeling from shooting death of her half-brother when she was slain not even a month later. Her sibling, 37-year-old Nigel Phillips, was shot to death in a home in Gaffney, S.C. on Nov. 8.

“It hurt her so bad because she wasn’t able to make it to his funeral,” Smith said. “She’s been going through it since.”

Smith described her daughter, who went by the nickname “Country,” as a religious woman devoted to her children.

“My baby was a beautiful singer,” Smith said. “She used to sing at church. She used to sing at people’s funerals. She can write. It’s so many friends she lost, she wrote poems for their funerals.”

Webb’s childhood was also marked by tragedy — her father was shot to death in Ohio when she was just 10. The case remains unsolved.

Webb had planned to come down to South Carolina about two weeks before Christmas with her children to visit her mother. Instead her mom had to come up to the Bronx and pick up Webb’s children so they could stay with her.

Webb was arrested for a pair of violent episodes before her death. On June 1, she was charged with beating and stomping a woman inside Webb’s Bronx apartment building that day.

And on Dec. 1, just five days before she was killed, Webb allegedly smashed the front windshield and the back and passenger-side windows of a red Honda Accord with an axe about a half-mile away from her home. She then swung the axe at the car’s owner and another man when they approached her, according to a criminal complaint against her.

It wasn’t immediately clear what prompted either incident but Webb’s mother claimed her daughter had acted in self-defense. Smith said the incidents were unrelated to her daughter’s murder.

Webb was released without bail after both arrests and was due back in court Jan. 16 to face the charges, which include assault and harassment.

With Julian Roberts-Grmla

Originally Published: December 21, 2024 at 2:16 PM EST