11-Year-Old Boy Stabs His Mother's Boyfriend After Watching Him Beat Her For 30 Minutes

  A fearless 11-year-old Brooklyn hero wielding a kitchen knife saved the lives of his mother and a cousin when his mom’s live-in boyfriend snapped and started choking both women in their Bushwick apartment.

“I had enough,” fourth-grader Terrance Allen told the Daily News in a gripping account of the life-and-death struggle in which he stabbed the assailant to rescue the two people he loves the most.

Now little Terrance wants to be a cop — so he can help save other lives and arrest other bad guys.

The drama unfolded at 11:20 p.m. on Saturday in their home in the Ocean Hill Apartments, a city housing project, where the boy watched the brutal assault in horror.


Ex-con boyfriend Timothy (Mohammad) Pender, 42, allegedly choked Terrance’s mother, Tracy Anderson, 35, in a sustained, half-hour attack that spilled over from the hallway to the kitchen to the living room.

When Terrance’s cousin, Kenyetta Parker, 27, tried to help the boy’s mother, a crazed Pender allegedly turned his rage on her in yet another vicious choking assault.

“I had a feeling something was going to happen,” the soft-spoken boy told The News in an exclusive interview as his mom, shaken and fighting back tears, looked on. “I was frightened.”

He didn’t show it: Skinny and baby-faced, but fast-thinking and with nerves of steel, Terrance had raced to the kitchen as Pender was throttling Parker, grabbing what his mother later called a “small steak knife” in his little fingers.

“I didn’t say anything. I just stood there for two or three minutes,” he recalled. “I wanted to see if he would get off her. But he didn’t. He was choking my cousin.

“She was punching him, trying to get him off. That’s when I thought — I had enough.”

There was only one way to stop the savage assault: Terrance approached Pender from behind and stabbed him in the back.

“I did it,” he said matter-of-factly. Then he ran from the room to seek help, descending a dozen flights of stairs from the apartment. “I didn’t look back,” he said. “I just kept on going.”

Terrance said he ran a block north to Marion St. and met a kind stranger, who took him to her apartment, where they called 911.

Cops descended on the scene and arrested Pender, who was charged with second-degree assault, criminal obstruction of breathing and criminal mischief.

The suspect has multiple prior arrests stretching back 20 years, records show. He has pleaded guilty in past cases to forcible touching, trespass, resisting arrest and theft of services.

Pender was admitted to Brookdale University Hospital on Sunday with knife wounds that were not life-threatening. It wasn’t immediately clear how serious his injuries were.

“I was shaken up” after the incident, Terrance said. “So I played Grand Theft Auto IV, and it made me calm down.”
Before the assault, Terrance wanted to be a video game creator when he grows up. Not anymore — now he wants to be a city police officer.

“I want to be a cop so I can put away people like him,” he says.

Does he think he’s a hero? “No, I just acted; I wasn’t really thinking,” Terrance explained.

And what should other kids do if they find themselves in similar situations? His answer was simple: “Call the cops. And if you can’t do that, run outside and get help.”

As his mother, now safe and sound, listened to Terrance’s homespun wisdom, she said with emotion, “He’s my only child. That’s my baby. My baby boy.”