BUTCHERED Slain by her beau during grandkid sleepover: cops
A SLEEPOVER at Grandma’s house turned into a “nightmare” when a deranged Bronx man fatally stabbed his girlfriend with her four grandchildren nearby, a Bronx prosecutor said Sunday.
Tyrone Crawley, 60 was charged with killing Sheila Williams, 67, in their 25th-floor apartment on Sedgwick Ave. in Morris Heights at 1:50 a.m. on Saturday.
Crawley knifed Williams 22 times, with at least seven of those violent strikes “independently fatal,” said Bronx Assistant District Attorney Christopher Regan. “Many were defensive wounds to her hands, as she tried to hold him off. By the time officers arrived, she was dead on the floor of her own bedroom.”
Cops found Crawley standing over Williams, “covered in blood, with the knife in his hand,” Regan said, adding officers had to Tase him as he tried to escape through a window. “What should have been another sleepover at Grandma’s house turned into a nightmare,” Regan said.
Crawley was held without bail until his next court hearing, on Thursday. He was also charged with assault, acting in a manner injurious to a child and weapons possession.
Crawley posted a video Tuesday on Facebook of a knife-cutting competition with contestants going through a gantlet of challenges.
Williams had her own poignant Facebook post on Feb. 28.
“Not all men are the same,” she wrote. “There are actually some real decent men out there that know and understand the worth of a good woman.”
Crawley and Williams, a grandmother of eight, were childhood friends, according to Terean Wilkins, Williams’ daughter, who lives on the floor below.
Before the attack, Wilkins said, she desperately tried to stop Crawley, and rushed the children out of the apartment as he became violent.
She said Crawley woke up when she came over to move a mattress into the living room for one of the grandchildren. “That’s when he said, ‘Y’all trying to set me up! Set me up!’ ” the devastated daughter recalled Sunday. “But I didn’t pay attention, just thought he was waking up.”
Crawley became more agitated. Alarmed, Wilkins rushed the kids, her 12-year-old daughter as well as her nieces, ages 10, 6 and 3 months, out of the apartment to a neighbor’s.
When she returned, she tried to get into the bedroom where her mother and Crawley were, but she was blocked by a table. Wilkins herself was stabbed in the forearm and chest. “I thought he was punching her,” she said. “I didn’t know he was stabbing her until I yelled and he lunged at me.”
The family had planned to go out for seafood for Mother’s Day — a normal outing that like the sleepover was replaced with incredible horror. “All I keep thinking is if I could have did it any way different?” she said. “How could it have ended any way different?”