Stabbing vic took homeless nephew into her home weeks before attack

A woman fighting for her life after her nephew stabbed her and killed four of her family members in her Queens house had opened her home to the mentally ill man facing homelessness just weeks before the murderous rampage, the Daily News has learned.

Police shot and killed Courtney Gordon, 38, after he stabbed two officers responding to the home on Beach 22nd St. near Elk Drive in Far Rockaway about 5:10 a.m. on Sunday, according to cops

Prior to that, Gordon stabbed his 61-year-old aunt Christine Watson, an 11-year-old girl, a 12-yearold boy, a 44-year-old woman and a man in his 30s before setting fire to the house, police said.

Watson, who was stabbed multiple times and is in critical condition at Mount Sinai Queens hospital, invited Gordon to move in with her about two weeks before the stabbings. “My aunt took him in because she felt sorry for him because he’s telling her he’s trying to get his life together,” Gordon’s sister, who did not want to be named, told The News. “I knew it was going to be bad.”

Gordon had been in and out of homeless shelters over roughly the past year after he separated from his wife.

“I wanted to tell her [that] this is bigger than us, to let him go back to the shelter, but no one was listening to me,” the sibling said. “She took him in. There’s no reason for this.”

Gordon began to unravel after he and his wife separated, catapulting him into a state in which he was “suffering deeply, deeply from depression and mental illness,” according to his sister.

“He loses his wife, he loses his happy home, he was gone,” she said. “He lost his job. He just lost it.”

As she watched her brother’s mental health deteriorate, the concerned sister took Gordon to mental health facilities — but he was routinely released.

“They’re telling me he’s a grown man [and] because of his age, I couldn’t sign the consent and give him the treatment,” she said. “I really tried because I know he wasn’t stable.”

Gordon, a father of three, bounced from shelter to shelter before Watson took pity on him and welcomed him into her home.

“My aunt, she’s a sweetheart,” his sister said. “She’s a wonderful person.”

“I didn’t think anything like this would happen,” she added. “He said he was going to try to get a job.”

The distraught woman recalled watching the news shortly after the stabbings and called Watson when she recognized the street name.

“She normally picks up the phone, and she didn’t pick up,” she said of Watson. “I was like, that’s strange. She always answers my calls.”

Shortly after, she learned her brother had killed four of her family members and critically wounded two police officers responding to a 911 call made by a young girl who said her cousin was “killing her family members.”

All of the victims lived together in the house, according to Gordon’s sister. Their names have not yet been released by police.

“I can’t describe how distraught I am,” she said. “I tried my very best. You don’t even know how much I tried.”

Gordon’s sister reflected on the life her brother had before mental illness consumed him and remembers him as a caring, loving man despite Sunday’s horrors.

“He was a good person. He was happy,” she said. “I just want everybody to know mental illness is really serious. It really is.”

In a brief interview with The News, Gordon’s mother, who asked not to be named, referred to him as a “good son.”

“I spoke to him yesterday. He just said to me, ‘Mama, I love you,’ ” I said, ‘I love you too, son’ — and then I get the news.”