The devastated goddaughter of a Bronx woman police say was killed by her own daughter still has enough room in her heart for the suspect, and plans on supporting the woman she calls her sister after she was arrested for murder Thursday.
Skydajah Patterson, 26, was charged with bludgeoning her mother Selma Mclean, 46, with a metal pot and causing her death early Monday at their home in the Adams Houses on Westchester Ave. near E. 156th St, police said.
Theodore Parisienne for New York Daily News
A 46-year-old woman was pronounced dead on scene after she was found with trauma to her face and head inside a Bronx apartment. (Theodore Parisienne for New York Daily News)
“I am going to be at court for every court date [Patterson] has. That’s my sister. I don’t want her to feel like she’s alone,” said Danaeyah Reynolds, 26, the victim’s goddaughter.
Family friends said Patterson, once a promising basketball player, was suffering from ongoing mental health difficulties, recently coming home from a stay at a psychiatric ward and never recovering after giving birth to a stillborn baby six months ago.
“She was due in September 2023 and the baby boy was stillborn. It happened in July or August. She never really dealt with it and her mental health spiraled.” said Rashawna Whitted, 46, Reynolds’ mother and the victim’s friend.
“She was huge in basketball,” said Whitted of Patterson.
In 2019, Patterson was named the 2019 Spalding National Junior College Athletic Association Division III Women’s Basketball Player of the Year, said Whitted. Patterson also won MVP honors after her team at Hostos College won the division’s championships, according to the association’s website.
“This award means a lot to me because the journey wasn’t easy,” the website quotes Patterson as saying upon receiving the honor.
Patterson graduated from Lincoln University in Pennsylvania in 2022 with a bachelor’s degree in business and planned to go back to school for a master’s degree but then got pregnant, said Whitted.
Despite Patterson being charged with Mclean’s murder, family friends said mother and daughter were exceptionally close.
“She and her mom loved each other. There is nothing that they would not do for each other. It just really got into a mental health crisis,” Reynolds said.
“She loved her daughter. There wasn’t a thing she wouldn’t do for her daughter. Sometimes they have their little quarrels, but that was it. They were inseparable. Her daughter was her whole life,” said Whitted.
The day before the killing the pair spent the day together, going to church and then to dinner at another one of Mclean’s daughter’s homes in Connecticut, said Reynolds.
Reynolds last saw Mclean and Patterson about 2 ½ hours before the slaying, when they returned home from Connecticut and Reynolds left the Bronx apartment at 1:00 a.m. Shortly before Mclean was killed, the worried mom sent messages to Reynolds that her daughter was hearing voices, the last time the goddaughter would hear from her.
“She did text me that night that Sky was hearing voices. She said that it was like another person popped out of Sky. She was trying to calm her daughter down. That was like the little back and forth between them and that was the last text I received from my godmother,” said Reynolds.
Cops responding to a 3:39 a.m. 911 call found Mclean dead, and Reynolds said Patterson is the one who made the call, confessing that she had killed her mother.
Reynolds heard from a friend on Monday morning that Mclean was dead and rushed to the building, seeking answers and finding the apartment in disarray.
“There were cops in front of the building, in front of the apartment,” said Reynolds. “The door was open and when I looked inside. The shoe rack was knocked down. Things were on the ground. There was blood on the floor and on the couch.”
The grieving goddaughter said Patterson had been acting oddly on Saturday while they spent time with Patterson’s sister and two friends, and when the murder took place some of the women were hours away from returning to the apartment to make sure Patterson wasn’t alone while her mother went to work.
Now Reynolds is left with a memory of Patterson that is difficult to reconcile with the actions she would soon take against Mclean.
“When I was leaving, Sky told me that she loved me. She asked if she could get a hug and that was the last time I spoke to [Patterson] in person,” Reynolds said.
