A Bronx man stabbed to death for showing up at his accused killer’s apartment high on meth was the emotional rock his family leaned on as they endured a string of tragedies in recent years, grieving relatives told the Daily News.
Aaron Carpenter, 34, was knifed by his neighbor, 31-year-old Antonio Jackson, on the sidewalk outside their adjacent apartment buildings on Bryant Ave. near E. 172nd St. in Crotona Park East about 6:35 p.m. Friday after a clash inside, law enforcement sources and witnesses said.
Aaron Carpenter, 34, was fatally stabbed outside his Bronx apartment building on Friday. (Google)
“He was fun to hang out with. He was the only sibling I never fought with,” the victim’s stepsister, 36-year-old Malina Fisher, told The News. “He never really had any problems with anyone. He kept to himself. He was very supportive.”
Fisher recalled how her stepbrother supported her through the death of her daughter from a chromosomal condition just before the baby’s first birthday in 2018.
“When something tragic in my life happened he was the one who was checking up on me a lot and making sure I was OK,” said Fisher. “I just want people to know he was a good person who looked out for everyone.”
The death of Fisher’s daughter was followed by the death of Carpenter’s father, her stepfather, an MTA bus driver who worked through the COVID lockdown and died two years ago due to complications caused by the disease, Fisher said.
“He was an essential worker during COVID,” she said of her stepfather. “The long-term effects of COVID messed him up and he went in to cardiac arrest and passed away.”
Less than a year later, a brother of Carpenter’s took his own life.
“We’ve been dealing with a lot these past two years,” said Fisher. “I’m not that close to that many people in my family, but the ones I am close to, they keep slipping away. How many people are we going to lose?”
A half-brother of Carpenter’s said Carpenter struggled emotionally after taking a DNA test in his early 20s that revealed the man who raised him was not his father.
“To him, his whole life was a lie,” said 33-year-old Frank Weathers, who was 22 years old when the DNA test revealed that he and Aaron were half-brothers. “I’m not sure how that feels but I’m pretty sure that would have me a little f–ked up.”
Weathers acknowledged his half-brother’s drug use but said that he doesn’t believe Carpenter simply wandered into Jackson’s apartment in a meth-fueled haze. He said that the pair had feuded previously over domestic abuse allegations against Jackson.
When Jackson was arrested for the murder, he was also charged with assault, harassment and criminal obstruction of breathing for allegedly repeatedly punching his 28-year-old intimate partner in her face and head in his apartment on Dec. 16. He is also accused of putting a plastic bag over her head to cut off her breathing.
“it’s not the first time those guys bumped heads about the domestic violence bulls–t,” Weathers said.
Carpenter appeared to be high on meth and was holding a glass pipe when he showed up at Jackson’s third-floor apartment, leading his accused killer and a neighbor to escort the victim out of the building, law enforcement sources told The News.
Other relatives of the victim reached out to The News disputing the law enforcement source’s narrative of events leading up to the slaying.
“(Carpenter) doesn’t live here so we escorted him out, not forcefully,” said a 55-year-old man who lives across the hall from Jackson and who joined in escorting Carpenter out of his building Friday. “Then Mr. Jackson took it to another level.”
Another man living in Jackson’s building said Jackson was ready to leave Carpenter on the street when the victim suddenly barked out an obscenity.
“Mr. Jackson goes back in but Aaron banged on the front door and said, ‘F–k you,’” the 44-year-old man, who lives down the hall from Jackson, told The News. If “Mr. Carpenter hadn’t knocked on that door and said, ‘F–k you,’ this probably would have never happened.”
Jackson was then seen darting into his apartment, only to emerge moments later carrying a long serrated knife, the witnesses said.
“Jackson came back with the kitchen knife. I couldn’t stop him. I thought he was just going to scare him. I didn’t think he was going to go all psycho on him,” said the man who lives across the hall from Jackson. “I couldn’t understand why he didn’t just beat him down. He was only one man.”
Carpenter retreated towards his own building down the block but Jackson “ran him down,” repeatedly stabbing him from behind on the victim’s stoop, sources said.
After stabbing the victim repeatedly in the neck and torso, Jackson briefly left and returned to see Carpenter slumped on the ground, bleeding out in front of another neighboring building, sources said.
Medics rushed Carpenter to St. Barnabas Hospital but he couldn’t be saved.
Police arrested Carpenter in the area shortly after, and he admitted to the stabbing and said he felt “disrespected” by the victim showing up at his apartment high on meth, sources said.
Jackson was arraigned on murder, manslaughter and weapon possession charges in Bronx Criminal Court Sunday and remains held without bail on Rikers Island.
