Albany

The blunt and chilling phone call was impossible for Wendy Barnett to fully comprehend.

"I think my mommy's dead," Charee Akins-Maddox's daughter told Barnett, who was Akins-Maddox's aunt. "She's not moving."

It was early Thursday morning, just past midnight. Barnett thought Akins-Maddox, a 33-year-old mother of four, was sick. She had a heart condition, Barnett said.

Murder never crossed Barnett's mind as she ran to Akins-Maddox's Lark Street apartment, where the children told her their mother had just been gunned down, allegedly shot in the back of her head by her boyfriend.

Akins-Maddox's kids, ages 4 to 19, were inside 156 Lark St. with their mother when she died. Whether they saw the killing is unclear. Barnett said the children were in a bedroom.

At around 12:40 a.m., Damien Zervos used a Saiga 223 Remington rifle to shoot Akins-Maddox, police said. As of Thursday evening, they did not have a motive.

About 12 hours later, Barnett watched Zervos, 32, plead not guilty to second-degree murder in Albany City Court. Zervos didn't speak as he was led, shackled, in front of Judge William Carter and then back to Albany County jail.

Barnett, who spoke briefly with reporters outside court, said she didn't know Zervos well. She said Akins-Maddox had lived in the Lark Street apartment for only a short time.

"Everything was fine. She didn't have no problems. I didn't know he was the type ... to me, he was a nice guy, but I don't know," Barnett said.

"She was a good mom," Barnett said. "She loved her kids and tried her best."

Akins-Maddox was killed in a narrow, two-story brick building a block north of Washington Avenue Armory, where many of the homes have been vacant for years. A line of yellow police tape sealed off the wooden steps to Akins-Maddox's home on Thursday.

The killing was the second shooting death in Albany this month. No arrests have been made in the Oct. 19 killing of Edward Maxim and no motive for that shooting has been released.

Zervos, unemployed and from Guilderland, was taken into custody shortly after Akins-Maddox was killed. Neighbors said they heard an intense argument at the home in the hours before her death.

A woman who lives next door and wished to be identified only as Kim said she heard yelling just after midnight. The dispute spilled outside, she said, where a large group of people were screaming at each other in front of 156 Lark St. Such noise, however, isn't unusual there, Kim said.

"I thought about calling the cops, but this isn't that uncommon around here," Kim said.

Christian Gabriels, an 18-year-old from Bethlehem who a month ago moved nearby, said he and his roommates saw the flash of police lights and at first thought the commotion up the street was a traffic stop.

Then they saw the police tape cordoning off the scene. They went up the street, where Gabriels said one of Akins-Maddox's relatives told them Akins-Maddox had called a family member just before she was killed, saying there was a problem at her apartment and she needed help.

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