The man stabbed to death by a stranger after witnesses said he bumped a child on board a crowded MetroBus leaves behind a wife and seven children.
The wife of Eric Lee Smith, 44, and three of his children spoke with News4 on Monday evening, speaking publicly for the first time since Smith's death August 10.
Smith was stabbed on the 800 block of H Street NE about 3:45 August 10 after he hit a little girl with a bag he was carrying and then was confronted by the woman and two men who intervened. The second man stabbed Smith in the heart. He died about 30 minutes later.
"He didn't deserve that. He was a mild man. A stayed-to-his-self-type of man," his devastated widow, Tiwanda Jackson-Smith said Monday, wearing a T-shirt with an image of her late husband's face. "Someone stabbed my husband in a senseless crime for no reason."
"He was more like a best friend," his son Dajzun Jackson-Smith said from the family's home in Northeast D.C.
"I'm torn up inside. My heart is gone. I feel so empty," his daughter Patrice Jackson-Smith said.
"I'm not gonna say he was a good dad, he is a good dad. He's a great dad," Patricia Jackson-Smith said.
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Smith's accused attacker, Hector L. Felix, 57, was arrested Friday afternoon at his home in Northwest D.C. and charged with second-degree murder while armed, Metropolitan Police Department Assistant Chief Peter Newsham said at a news conference Friday. He was identified with the help of multiple witnesses.
The family is struggling to make sense of the loss and pay for his funeral.
"This is a hard thing to take in, when you have to put your child away," Smith's aunt, Linda Mercer, said. "And then you have to put your child away and worry about how you're going to put him away."
The family is collecting donations online.
