Bedbug concerns sparked fatal knife fight in Bronx apartment building
A fatal knife fight in a Bronx apartment that left blood splattered on the hallway walls was between the building super and his tenant — a violent clash that may have been sparked by complaints about bedbugs — police and tenants said Tuesday.
An ongoing disagreement between the tenant, identified by neighbors as 38-year-old Christopher Cook, and the 53-year-old super in the single-room occupancy building in Mott Haven ended in bloodshed during the 7:40 p.m. clash on Monday, cops said.
Cook was stabbed in the chest, according to police.
Glenn Robinson, who lives at the building on E. 136th St. near Willis Ave., heard the two men yelling at each other before loud thumping noises began echoing from the shared upstairs area. It was as if the two men were throwing each other around the room, he said.
“Something told me to come upstairs,” Robinson told the Daily News. “They were tussling already. The door was open and right there, all the blood [was] leaking out.”
Robinson found Cook and a man cops identified as James Akerson, fighting.
“Are you trying to kill me?” Cook screamed at his attacker, Robinson recalled. Akerson’s knife was about a foot long, he said.
“And [Cook] just dropped ... ‘Boom!’” Robinson said. “I said, ‘I’m calling the police!’ and I go downstairs, and [Akerson] was like, ‘Don’t call the cops!’”
“I said, ‘You crazy, motherf----r?’” he recounted. “‘I’m calling the police, man!’”
As Robinson ran down to his apartment to get his cell phone, Akerson tried to revive Cook.
“He was begging for Chris to wake up,” Robinson said. “[Then he] just took off and ran down the street. He knew he was in trouble.”
Akerson returned as police arrived. He had stab wounds on both of his arms, cops said. The two were taken to Lincoln Hospital, where Cook died.
Cops took Akerson into custody at the hospital. He was charged with murder, manslaughter and criminal possession of a weapon.
The two men were always fighting “about dumb stuff,” tenant Gigi Smith said.
Most recently, the two men argued over Cook bringing furniture he found on the street back to his room. Akerson was concerned the furniture had bedbugs that would infest the whole building, Smith said.
Akerson also constantly yelled at Cook for leaving the front door open, she recalled.
“It came to this?” Smith asked. “Like, the man had to die?”
Smith was returning from a Halloween party with her 5-year-old son and 3-year-old daughter Monday night when she spotted the gore-covered walls.
“At first I thought it was a Halloween prank,” she recalled. “I had to step back and went across the street and called the police to escort me upstairs.”
Cops covered her children’s eyes as they took them to their second-floor apartment, she remembered.
“This is crazy,” said Smith, who planned to put in a request to move out Wednesday.
Robinson had warned Cook about arguing with the building super.
“I told Chris, ‘If two people don’t get along, even if you live in the same house, you go in your room and close your door. Don’t say nothing.’” he said.
Cook and Akerson moved into the building around the same time in 2020, neighbors said. Both men had criminal records, and Akerson had recently lost his fiancée to a drug overdose.
“He’s going through a lot,” Smith said of Akerson.
