KILLER IN MY FACE
She stomped my son to death. 3 years later, I live with his...
Carlyle Williamson (main photo) was shocked to see Athena Skeeter (l.) back in nabe after her early prison release for killing his son Cardell (r.).
WALKING PAST the red brick Bronx tenement where his baby boy was beaten to death was heartbreaking enough for Carlyle Williamson.
Walking past the boy’s recently freed killer on the street is just too much to bear.
“I thought she was going to be in for another year and a half,” said Williamson, who lives just down the street from the death building. “I try to stay away from her . . . She walks through the neighborhood as if she’s President.”
Athena Skeeter — the day care provider who stomped on his little boy Cardell in the summer of 2014 — is out of jail and back near the scene of her crime.
Williamson was unsure it was her when their paths first crossed, so he kept on walking. Then the phone calls started.
Williamson has family up and down the street — and they all immediately recognized the killer. Skeeter was back after serving just under three years of her fouryear sentence.
Williamson, 58, says Skeeter also has family that’s lived in the neighborhood for decades. Her old second-floor apartment, the site of the killing, is padlocked and appears currently unoccupied.
But she’s been seen on the street several times in the last two weeks, he says.
“I couldn’t believe it,” said Williamson’s cousin, Sandra Winn, who watched the 42-year-old Skeeter walk along, shaking hands and waving to neighbors.
After the calls from relatives, Williamson called the assistant district attorney who handled the case. The prosecutor confirmed Skeeter’s release.
A distant cousin of Skeeter, living in the same building where the death occurred, said Williamson should have no gripe about the former day care worker’s return.
“I don’t care what the father said,” she snapped. “This is a free country. She can go anywhere she wants to!”
But Skeeter’s reappearance brought back all the nightmarish details of Cardell’s sad death on Aug. 22, 2014. The boy was rushed to the hospital from Skeeter’s home day care, and pronounced dead.
Williamson had only won custody of Cardell after a protracted Family Court battle with the child’s mother — but the city required that he land full-time work. He was ordered to find a day care for Cardell.
He placed his son with Skeeter after the city Administration for Children’s Services provided him with a list of nearby licensed day care providers.
When the police interviewed Skeeter, she told a tale of “wrestling” with the infant that hot summer day. She recounted throwing the toddler on a bed, then lifting the boy “by one arm and one leg and (throwing) him to the floor. The floor was hardwood.”
Her confession is very matter of fact: “I stepped on his stomach three times. I didn’t use full force. I then threw my son on top of Cardell and stepped on his stomach three times.”
Skeeter told police that Cardell suddenly “acted different” and began to vomit.
“His head kept tilting,” she said. “He couldn’t walk on his own.”
She claimed she put the child in the bathtub and put cold water on his face, then stepped out of the bathroom to put a chair outside.
When she turned back Cardell was slumped down and “steam was rising out of water.”
The boy’s death was ruled a homicide, and she was initially charged with second-degree murder. But in a deal last month, Skeeter pleaded to manslaughter with a maximum sentence of four years.
The DA’s office said Williamson had signed off on the deal.
Skeeter — jailed since 2014 — had already served two years and seven months. The state Department of Corrections more or less automatically releases prisoners after completing two-thirds of their maximum sentence if they behave while in jail.
Skeeter, thanks to her good prison demeanor, was turned loose April 17.
Carlyle recounted his disturbing Skeeter encounter last week as a headstone donated by a Bronx stone-cutter and subsidized by Daily News readers was placed on the grave of his only child.
On Thursday, under a cloudy sky threatening rain, Williamson returned to the Rosehill Cemetery in Linden, N.J., with his cousin Winn, his brother James Joyce, and friend Valencia Boone.
They watched quietly as Rob Caro of Crown Monuments in the Bronx unveiled the Indian black granite headstone his company had created and donated for Cardell.
The stone featured a silver etching of Cardell’s smiling face from a photo taken when he was just a year old at a family barbecue.
Under the dates of Cardell’s brief life — born Dec. 31, 2012, died Aug. 22, 2014 — Crown had inscribed, “The greatest loss I have ever known.”
Williamson, after admiring Crown’s handiwork, knelt in front of the stone and ran his fingers over the etching of his child’s smiling face.
“It’s like he’s right here,” he said. “His eyes follow me. It’s amazing.”