An elderly deaf woman who was fatally stabbed inside her Brooklyn apartment by a relative who also slashed her son was “an angel,” heartbroken neighbors told the Daily News.
Cops responding to a 911 call around 9:30 a.m. Friday found Malka Semenduyeva, 72, and a 47-year-old son who lived with her, both stabbed multiple times in their apartment on Bedford Ave. near Avenue U in Sheepshead Bay.
Medics rushed both victims to Coney Island Hospital, where Semenduyeva died, police said. Her son is expected to survive.
The attacker was a relative, according to police.
Semenduyeva’s neighbors told The News they believed the attacker was another adult son who also lived with Semenduyeva.
At a memorial in the building lobby on Saturday, neighbors, friends and family members shared their reflections of Semenduyeva, who was deaf, as NYPD crime scene investigators walked in and out.
“I mean, besides being the most kindest, beloved neighbor, she was a mother, she was a sister, she was an aunt,” said Emilia Loginova, 38, who lived on the same floor as Semenduyeva and said her family grew close to the victim.
“She just had the most beautiful energy. She was always smiling, always happy, like, always grateful to see people, always remembered everyone,” Loginova said. “And just, you know, the way she passed, [she] was not deserving [of that].”
“The way it happened,.. we haven’t been able to sleep,” Loginova lamented. “We’re all like, just devastated, crying, just anxious about it. She was one of the most kindest women that I’ve ever met. She was an angel, not a bad bone in her body, not even a bad thought. She couldn’t communicate, but she could read my lips, I could read her lips, so you just felt her energy. She was a beautiful, beautiful soul. And I think we just lost an angel.”
Another neighbor said Semenduyeva had inspired her to learn sign language.
“She was so nice, and she was kind of the reason why I was learning sign language, cause I only knew ‘Thank you’,” said neighbor Selicia Smith, 41. “Sometimes I would see her and be like ‘Where you going?’ And she’s like, ‘home.’ You know, we’ll talk to each other. So she was one of the reasons why I was learning sign language.”
Smith said Semenduyeva’s 47-year-old son would often translate for his mother. “The other son would tell me what she’s saying. He was nice,” Smith said.
But another brother was a different story, according to Smith. “If I get in here and he’s waiting for the elevator, I never go in. I’m terrified of that man. I’m not lying,” Smith said.
Loginova said she would also avoid the other brother. “I wouldn’t even go on the elevator” if he was in there, she said.
Multiple neighbors described hearing frequent loud arguments and screaming coming from Semenduyeva’s apartment. Neighbors reported calling 911 numerous times, but said nothing ever came out of their frequent calls.
Neighbors said they believe the second brother had a “heavy drug problem” that may have exacerbated the fights neighbors heard coming from the apartment.
“He’s always been drugs, and like at one point, I remember even yesterday, the day before yesterday, seeing him outside and seeing those eyes, like you knew that there was demonic state in him at that point,” Loginova said.
Longtime residents of the building said Semenduyeva — who lived there for 20 years, according to the superintendent — would intervene when the fights between the sons got violent. Neighbors speculated Semenduyeva may have been trying to intervene in a fight between the sons when she died.
“No one deserves that, because she loves her son, she loved both of them,” Loginova said.
