NYC teen slams cousin who strangled his mom before judge hands down life sentence

The teen son of an East Harlem woman who was murdered and stuffed in a storage bin by her cousin described Wednesday how he experienced “trauma after trauma” — first his mom’s murder and then the killer texting him pretending to be her.

Omir Walcott cried as he delivered the wrenching impact statement to a Manhattan courtroom, leaving in tears moments before convicted murderer Khalid Barrow — who didn’t even bother showing up to the hearing — was hit with the maximum sentence.

“My whole family is destroyed,” said the devastated teen, who was just 14 when his 35-year-old mom, Nisaa Walcott, was killed, her twisted body then crammed into a plastic container and dumped on a Bronx sidewalk a week later.

“I felt fooled when I found out that I thought that the memory of my mother was kept alive by his text messages,” the boy said referring to Barrow, 23, who refused to face his kin in court and instead cowered behind bars.

“I feel horrible inside like it was my fault I let this man think that he was my mother and think that he could get one over on me. And he did,” Omir continued.

“It’s been trauma after trauma,” the teen said. “It’s like it’s digging at my skin like someone’s nails just scratching.”

Minutes later, his mom’s killer was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison for killing Walcott last year in what prosecutors said was a twisted scheme to steal her money — which he blew on marijuana, drinks and food.

“It’s one of the saddest cases that I have ever presided over in that the defendant in this case had a family that was willing to be there for him all the time — and he clearly took advantage of that family,” Acting Supreme Court Justice Laura Ward said as she meted out the punishment.

“What Khalid Barrow did to his cousin after her death was reprehensible. His actions indicated a callous disregard for not only the victim in this case, but for the entire family.”

The victim’s relatives packed at least five rows of the courtroom gallery and looked on in tears — but Barrow apparently “couldn’t face” them, his defense attorney said.

“He described to our social worker— and that’s reflected in the pre-sentence memorandum— that he failed to come to court because he, frankly, couldn’t face the extended family,” Barrow’s lawyer, Adam Freedman, told reporters after the proceedings.

“And he could not deal with, I think, in a direct way, what he knew the inevitable result here would be,” Freedman added.

Prosecutors said Barrow pummeled and strangled his cousin to death on Feb. 18, 2022, then stashed her body in the plastic bin and lugged it to the roof of her apartment building, where it sat undetected for nearly one week.

But the killer didn’t stop there — he went on a spending spree with the victim’s credit card and used her cell phone to send relatives phony text messages to throw them off.

Among those were texts sent to Omir, in which Barrow pretended to be the boy’s mother and convinced him that she wanted Barrow to take care of him.

“No mercy was shown to the family. We all were toyed with emotionally,” Eugene Butler, Walcott’s brother, told the judge.

“He left us broken,” Butler said of his sister’s killer. “Her life was stolen from us like the money he stole from her.”

The victim’s son described her death as a “hard heartbreak.”

“It’s hard as a kid growing up with no mother. It’s hard because it was just me and her. That’s the only mother figure I had in my life, so no one could compare to her in any way,” Omir said.

“It’s sad to see she won’t be there for high school graduation.”

Prosecutors said Barrow only moved the container containing his cousin’s remains when cops questioned him after suspicious relatives clued in that no one knew where Walcott was and reported her missing.

Surveillance video captured Barrow loading the bin onto a cab and dumping it on the sidewalk on University Avenue in the Highbridge section of the Bronx on Feb. 25, 2022.

Disturbing photos obtained by The Post last year showed the murdered woman’s body folded inside the container with her ankles bound and miscellaneous clothing packed around her.

Barrow was found guilty at his trial in Manhattan Supreme Court on Nov. 29 of murder in the second-degree. concealment of a human corpse, grand larceny and criminal possession of stolen property.

He was sentenced to the max for murder and 1 1/3 to four years on the lesser charges, with the prison terms to run concurrently.

“The defendant’s criminal conduct was an unspeakable betrayal. Khalid Barrow strangled his cousin in her own home, all for his own financial gain,” Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who was in court for the sentencing, said in a statement released after.

“No sentence can undo this family’s pain, but I hope they continue to heal from this terrible loss.”