BX. ‘NIGHTMARE’
Arrested in stab death of step-granddad
A Bronx man was stabbed to death by his 26-year-old step-granddaughter early Monday after they quarreled over her removing the lock to their apartment, police and relatives said.
The two got into the argument inside 53-year-old Eric Chambers’ home on Longwood Ave. near Prospect Ave. in Longwood. As the quarrel escalated, Kimberly Roberts allegedly stabbed her step-grandfather in the chest and left arm about 12:55 a.m.
“It’s a nightmare,” said Christina Chambers, who is the victim’s wife and the grandmother of the suspect. “Why should my husband be 53 in his grave? What’s the sense of that?”
Roberts is a transgender woman. Her grandmother still refers to her as “he.”
Chambers, 60, said she and her husband took Roberts in after she got booted from her home in Throgs Neck five years ago. She believes Roberts started using drugs recently.
“We usually all get along,” Chambers said. “I don’t know what was wrong with Kim. Kim for the last few months would come here screaming, hollering.”
Late Sunday, Christina Chambers discovered that the top lock to their apartment door had been removed. Roberts only had a key to the bottom lock so when she came home at odd hours she would have to knock to be let in, exciting the family’s dogs, Chambers said.
When they discovered the lock missing, Chambers immediately called her granddaughter.
“I told him to bring the lock back so we could put it back on,” she said. “I wasn’t gonna do nothing to him — he is my first grandson.”
Roberts returned to the apartment angry.
“Eric asked him where’s our lock, so we can put it back on,” Chambers said. “We would have put it back. He’s handy like that, my husband.”
Chambers said Roberts responded, “Yeah, motherf—-er, I took it off, what you gonna do?”
“Next thing you know, they were scuffling in the living room,” Chambers said. “I was coming down the hallway, I banged on my son’s door so he could break up the fight. He came out the room, he broke up the fight, and Kim left. My husband came to me, back to my room, and showed me the gashes on his arm and on his chest.”
Paramedics tried to stabilize her husband but by the time he got to Lincoln Hospital, it was too late.
“He lost a lot of blood in my room and all over the house,” she said. “I can’t believe my husband is just dead. It happened so quick.”
Roberts, meanwhile, ran off. After police arrived, Chambers called her granddaughter. “Kim answered the phone,” Chambers said. “Two big cops were here when I called. I put him on speaker and I said, ‘You know something? You murdered your grandfather when you stabbed him.’ He started crying. And he said, ‘I’m on my way back to the house.’ And they arrested him.”
Police said they were questioning Roberts.
“I didn’t think he was coming to kill my husband and fight. Why, why would you do that?” Chambers said. “I don’t know what the hell happened. I didn’t know he had a knife. I mean really, you gonna do that to your grandfather, after we done raised you?”
Roberts’ father, one of Christina Chambers’ sons, was fatally stabbed in the Bronx about two years ago, Chambers said. She speculated the two-year anniversary of his unsolved slaying later this month might have put Roberts on edge. “I don’t know if it’s the anniversary coming up, but Kim’s been hollering and screaming and doing things he ordinarily didn’t do,” she said.
Chambers said it was her husband who persuaded her to take Roberts in five years ago. “I said ‘I don’t want him in my house, I’m not dealing with nobody grown,’ ” she recalled. “And he said, ‘Honey, come on, that’s our first grandson. Stick up and fight for him.’ ”