A 37-year-old father of eight was stabbed to death on the Queens block where he lived and worked as a security guard, police and friends said Wednesday.
Brandon Williams got in a clash outside a row of single-room occupancy homes on Beach 115th St. near Rockaway Beach Blvd. in Rockaway Park about 9 p.m. Tuesday, cops said.
Williams grew up in the Bronx and had moved to the Rockaways about three years ago, his friend said.
He lived in an SRO on Beach 115th St. and, for the last year and a half, worked as a night security guard for his building and two other SROs on the block.
He was stabbed in the chest and left wrist after telling a tenant in one of the buildings where he worked security that the tenant couldn’t bring a woman up to his room after visiting hours, a close friend of Williams told the Daily News.
“(The tenant) was trying to bring a girl up,” said Brandon’s friend, who lives across the street from him and was one of the last people to see the victim alive. “It was after hours. Tenants are not allowed to have overnight visitors.”
“This chick was drunk, yelling and screaming more loud than anybody,” added the 51-year-old friend, who wished not to be named. “(Brandon) was just trying to tell her like, ‘You can’t be on the property.’”
The friend calmed an outraged Brandon down, then went into his home to get a cord to a television he had given to his buddy earlier.
When he came back outside, cops had flooded the street and the area behind his home after the killer escaped through several backyards, said the man, who considered Brandon a nephew though they’re not related by blood.
“People was out here and telling me my nephew got stabbed up,” he said.
“Eight minutes, that’s all it took.” he added, referring to the time it took him to get the power cord and go back outside. “I should have never gone in the house.”
Medics rushed Williams to Jamaica Hospital, where he died.
On Wednesday, blood stains and discarded blue surgical gloves marked the spot in the middle of the street near what Williams was slain. His hat remained lying on the asphalt next to the blood stain.
“I saw the knife and the blood,” the friend said. “It was a switchblade. The whole thing was probably six inches.”
Cops on Wednesday were scouring Beach 115th St. for surveillance footage that could help them identify the killer, who has not been caught.
Williams had eight children, the oldest 19, the youngest about 3, friends said.
Williams suffered from bipolar disorder and had a quick temper, which sometimes got him into trouble, his friend said.
“He was just doing his job but he doesn’t know how to express himself,” the friend said. “He expresses himself kind of abruptly. His delivery is really mad. He gets angry.”
On a good day, the victim would “give you the shirt off his back,” the wife of Williams’ friend, who considered herself Williams “auntie,” recalled.
“You needed a cigarette, and it was his last one, he was like ‘Alright (take it),’” she recalled. “You needed something to drink? ‘Don’t worry, I got it,’ he would say.”
“The whole situation could’ve been handled a whole lot better,” she said of the clash that led to his slaying. “It never should’ve ended the way it did.”
Williams was the second person to be murdered in the Rockaways in a week.
About 7:45 p.m. Aug. 6, a 39-year-old man was shot multiple times in the abdomen outside of the Hammel Houses on Rockaway Beach Blvd. near Beach 86th St., cops said. Medics rushed him to Brookdale University Hospital, but he could not be saved, cops said. No arrests have been made.
The victim was described by neighbors as a longtime resident of the NYCHA complex who walked up to six of his dogs at the same time.
Six hours after that slaying, a 37-year-old man was shot in the stomach and left leg inside the lobby of a Hammel Houses building on the other side of the complex, near Rockaway Beach Blvd. and Beach 81st St. That victim survived.
The Hammel Houses killing was the first homicide to take place in the 100th Precinct this year while Williams’ slaying was the second.
An additional three people have been slain this year in the 101st Precinct, which covers Far Rockaway from Beach 59th St. east to the Long Island border.
Originally Published: August 13, 2025 at 8:04 AM EDT
