Saturday, June 11, 2026 - A man viciously butchered his own mother to de@th with a machete, shoving the blade down her throat and into her liver, prosecutors said Wednesday, July 8.
Armel Crawford, 26, was arraigned on murd£r charges for
k!lling his mother, 61-year-old Joanne Crawford, in their Far Rockaway home, on
Tuesday morning, July 7, according to police and prosecutors.
“The victim sustained 11 stab wounds,” Queens Assistant
District Attorney Lindsey Ruzza said in court. “A stab wound to the abdomen went through the
liver and through the entire body. A knife was shoved down her throat which
split her tongue in half and perforated the trachea.”
Police made the grisly discovery around 10:40 a.m. Tuesday —
and later arrested Armel Crawford, but only after he ran onto the beach and
into the water, a police source told The Post.
Ruzzo said the accused k!ller then tried to make a run for
it by running into the Rockaway surf.
“The defendant was taken into custody at Beach 62nd Street
and Rockaway Boardwalk, where he had run into the water presumably to evade
capture,” she said.
According to one police source, the race to the water “looked
like he was trying to k!ll himself.”
He was arraigned Wednesday on charges of second-degree
murd£r and fourth-degree criminal possession of a weapon and ordered held
without bail by Judge Sharifa Milena Nasser-Cuellar.
Joanne, a retired city corrections officer, was found inside
the home around 10:40 a.m. Tuesday and pronounced de@d at the scene.
The mother and son had a tumultuous relationship, with
police responding to domestic disturbance complaints at the home, including two
earlier this year, yet neither turned violent, sources said.
Armel Crawford, who has no criminal record, had a strained
relationship with his mom because of her past career as a city corrections
officer, which one relative said left her little time for mothering.
“He never was a troubled kid outside; he just had problems
with her,” the accused k!ller’s cousin, Barry Crawford, told The Post. “I think
his biggest problem with her is that she worked for corrections, she was a
retired corrections officer, so she was never home.
“He felt that she never gave him the quality time that he desired,” he said.
The f@tal stabbing shocked neighbors, some of whom said they had seen Armel
Crawford grow up.
“We are all pretty shaken up,” one local who asked not to be identified
told The Post. “This is extremely shocking. We’re all just trying to process
what happened. There are so many stories going around but we don’t know what to
believe.”
Another neighbor called the family “nice people” who were already living
on the block when he moved in 30 years ago.
“I watched him grow up from a little boy,” a woman who knew the family
said. “We are all in shock. My whole family, we’re in shock. I still can’t
believe this is real.”
Barry Crawford said he started “pouring tears” after learning about
Joanne’s d£ath and remembered her as a giving fixture of the community who was
always there for her loved ones
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