Bronx jurors listened to a chilling 911 call Tuesday in which a little boy screamed, “There’s a robber in my house! He’s trying to kill my mom!’’
Mom Denise Soto testified on the stand how her young sons ages 4 and 11 watched as home-invasion brute Brian Febus tried to suffocate her on her bed April 25, 2017 — her 32nd birthday.
Minutes earlier, a hooded Febus had knocked on the family’s door, asking to use the bathroom, then busted into the apartment, Soto said.
Febus pinned Soto face-down on her bed at one point in an attempt to suffocate her, she testified.
The boys “were screaming, ‘Let go of my mom!’ ’’ Soto recalled.
As she began playing dead, her older boy, Jeremy, grabbed a knife from the kitchen and stabbed the attacker twice in the back before he fled.
The boy then frantically called 911.
Soto was asked to describe how she felt during the savage assault, which left her with cuts and bruises on her hand, arm, lips and chest.
“Desperate, scared. … I never expected that situation to happen to me,’’ the mom said. “I was scared for my life.’’
She added that she and her traumatized sons moved out of the apartment immediately after the assault.
In opening statements in Bronx Supreme Court on Monday, Febus’s lawyer argued that his client — Soto’s ex-boyfriend’s brother — went to pick up his sibling’s belongings at the apartment. He claimed Soto knew Febus before the attack, contrary to what she told officials.
“It was [Soto’s] fault,” said the lawyer, Angelo Petrigh, saying Soto “escalated” things.




