Family reels in wake of senseless stabbing of young mom near Port Authority

A 22-year-old woman fatally stabbed last week in Hell's Kitchen was a doting young mom whose 2-year-old daughter has been wondering about her since then, the victim's heartbroken family said Monday.

“She was asking my uncle, 'Where's Mommy?' All the family is getting together and I'm sure she understands they're crying for her mother,” Jordin Walston's cousin, Naomi Walston, 32, said in an exclusive Monday interview with the Daily News.

“That’s all they had, was each other.”

Jordin Walston was stabbed in the chest by Samaria Lopez, also 22, on W. 40th St. near Eighth Ave. around 10:15 pm on June 11, cops said.

In surveillance video obtained by The News, Lopez was seen making a beeline for Walston on the sidewalk as the victim stood with several people, and the two grappled with each other before Lopez stabbed Walston twice. The entire encounter lasted 20 seconds.

Walston managed to slip away from Lopez and medics rushed her to Bellevue Hospital, but she could not be saved.

Walston's grandfather started an online fundraiser Sunday to cover the cost of a funeral and benefit Walston's daughter Legacy, whom he wants to bring to North Carolina to live with him.

“She left a baby behind… who needs to be taken care of. I'm lost for words life will never be the same. I want a decent burial and my granddaughter well taken care of,” Larry Walston wrote.

In addition to the financial stress, the grandfather is struggling emotionally, along with Walston's grandmother.

“I can't deal with knowing my granddaughter won't be here and how she died,” said Larry Walston, 64.

“My ex is in the hospital,” said the grandfather. “My ex is Jordin's grandmother, she had a nervous breakdown behind this.”

Walston's cousin remembered the victim, who spent much of her childhood with her, as physically small but with a big personality.

“She was tiny,” said Naomi Walston. “She was a firecracker, she was intelligent.”

Naomi Walston recalled “her favorite little cousin” teaching her classmates Spanish when she was 6.

“She had a lot of life snuffed out of her,” said the relative.

Naomi Walston said her cousin and her cousin's mother were just getting back on good terms with each other after the victim spent a portion of her childhood in foster care.

“They were finally declaring to leap and get back to that space,” said the cousin.

“She shouldn't have been murdered on the street like an animal and she shouldn't be buried like that,” she added. “Jordin doesn't deserve to be thrown away like nothing, she deserves to be sent away.”

After the stabbing in Midtown, Lopez simply walked off, but was arrested on Friday for the killing, said cops. According to the Manhattan district attorney's office, Lopez was arrested Saturday on murder charges and held without bail.

Lopez gave no reason for the deadly attack, a police source said, and told reporters nothing as she took out of the Midtown South Precinct stationhouse on W. 35th St. on Friday

“It’s a weird one, she hasn’t said anything,” the source said. “All we know is it stems from a previous dispute.”

At the start of the surveillance video, seven adults, one of them carrying a baby and another with a toddler in a stroller, look warily down the block to the east, the direction they have just come from.

They pause about a minute outside a convenience store, where they have a discussion, and suddenly the suspect rushes them.

“She knows what she did and she looked really evil,” Naomi Walston said of Lopez. “She deserves to be condemned and get a sentence of a murderer.”

“She took away a young lady's life, somebody's mother,” said the cousin. “Jordin didn’t deserve that.”