‘New York Church Pastor Killed By Son’
By Stefan J. Bos, Chief International Correspondent Worthy News
NEW YORK (Worthy News) – Members of a New York City church are grieving and praying after a 40-year-old man was charged with killing his mother, who was also the pastor.
Sydnor, 61, had wounds to her neck, ear, and hands allegedly inflicted by her son Kenji Francis. “It seems like he just snapped,” a police source told local media.
He reportedly had no criminal record or a history of mental illness.
Investigators said they discovered a knife, thought to have been the murder weapon, from a bedroom in Sydnor’s Brooklyn home on Wyona Street.
“What happened is I slit her up,” Kenji Francis allegedly admitted to officers after she was found in a pool of blood with cuts all over her face just after Saturday.
She was rushed to Brookdale University Hospital, where she was pronounced dead.
Sydnor, who church members said had “a voice like an angel,” was appointed to the pastor role just two months ago, according to a post on the church’s Facebook page.
Bishop J. Carl Henderson, the senior pastor at the church, urged believers to keep Sydnor’s family in prayer.
“Please keep the Sydnor, Francis, Chambers, and Upper Room Family in prayer as we mourn the loss of our Mother, sister, cousin, friend, and Executive Pastor, Pastor Tracey Sydnor,” he wrote on his Facebook website. “Further information will be released in the days to come.”
Friend Yvonne Chambers remembered Sydnor as “the consummate lady.”
“You didn’t hide your love for God,” she wrote in a Facebook post. “I am grateful for our conversations around how you knew you were called to the ministry. I, being tone-deaf, envied in a good way your beautiful voice.”
She added that with the pastor gone, “we are all trying to understand and accept” God’s will.
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