A relative of the Queens man accused of stabbing his mother to death with a machete told the News the family tried their best to diffuse ongoing friction between the pair before her grisly slaying.
Armel Crawford, 26, was charged with murder July 7 after retired city corrections officer, Joanna Crawford, 61, was found dead with numerous stab wounds inside the family’s Far Rockaway home on Nameoke Ave. near Pinson St. about 10:40 a.m., cops said.
The killing followed escalating tension at home.
“[Joanna] called me just a month or two ago and said, ‘Look, you know, Armel and me, we’re not really seeing eye to eye on things,” the victim’s cousin, Barry Crawford, told the News. “Could he stay with you? I just need to get some space between us.’
I said, ‘No problem,” Crawford recalled. “I tried to talk to [Armel.] I was telling him, come stay with me… get away, and get a little air between y’all, or whatever.”
Armel has no prior arrests, but the NYPD says cops had been called to his home at least four times in the last five years to stop heated arguments between him and his mother. In June, police filed a domestic incident report in which Armel was accused of harassing his mother, cops said. In April, cops said they returned to the home again after the two argued over an aunt staying with them.
Despite the cousin’s repeated offers, Armel just said he was “not ready,” to stay at his place.
“I can’t make him but I kept trying,” Crawford said. “I would ask him if he wanted to help me do some work. He helped me one time and then after that he started making excuses. ‘I’m busy I can’t do it right now,’ you know, stuff like that.”
When Crawford’s phone rang Tuesday, a relative said they had something to tell him.
“I said, ‘What’s going on, man? What happened? Is it Joanna and Armel?’” he recalled. “He said, ‘Yeah, Joanna is gone…’ I said, ‘What are you talking about? Joanna is gone?’ He said, ‘Joanna is dead.’”
Crawford’s elderly mother discovered her lifeless body Tuesday morning, the cousin said.
“She said she heard a rumble upstairs… When she saw her laying on the ground, she came outside, calling somebody, ‘Help me, help me! My daughter’s laying on the floor! Call 911!’”
She was pronounced dead at the scene as police launched a search for the killer.
Later that evening Armel tried in vain to evade police as they closed in on him, jumping off the Rockaway boardwalk and into the ocean, his cousin said.
“He tried to jump into the ocean” and the police had to pull him out of the water, the cousin said.
A Queens criminal court judge held Armel without bail at his arraignment July 8. He is set to return to court Monday.
“I’m mad at him. He took the one person that I truly loved in this family, probably the most, the most, the most,” Barry Crawford said. “I’m hurt, man. I’m hurt that she’s gone. I can’t really grasp this in my mind. That I won’t see her no more. I’ve been crying all the time, just about all day. I can’t stop crying.”
The cousin described the victim as fun-loving and “the life of the family.”
“Joanna was the most beautiful person in the world… She was that woman that make the party go,” he said. “She’ll be dancing and make everybody else get up and dance. She said, ‘You ain’t gonna be sitting down while I’m here.’ That’s how she was. Very lively, fun, fun person, fun to be around, loving and caring.”
Barry Crawford said he last saw his cousin on the Fourth of July at a relative’s party. She had recently expressed concern about her son.
“Joanna told me, [about] a week ago she was worried. She said that she didn’t trust [Armel] or something, something’s going on,” the cousin said. “I really should have focused in on that more.”
Growing up, Armel was a “fun, bubbly kid” who excelled playing football, Barry Crawford said.
“He was a fun guy to be around, talk to and enjoy his company,” he said. “I would say the last two or years, by the time he got to 23, something like that, that’s when things started to look… different. His personality.”
“He wasn’t listening to his mother and he was disrespecting her,” he added. “I don’t know where all of this came from.”
In addition to the confrontations between mother and son, police responded to other arguments in November 2022 and in August 2021 when the son was seen throwing hot water in the hallway, cops said.
The victim was always a dedicated mother to Armel, her only child, working long hours as a city Department of Correction officer for more than two decades to provide for him until she retired in 2010.
“I don’t know if that played a part that she never was home,” he said. “She spoiled him rotten. She did everything for him.”