Sheriff’s deputies in North Carolina have arrested a white man on charges of killing his Black wife earlier this month.
Alexander Dzikowski, 33, was charged with first-degree murder after authorities determined he stabbed his wife several times during a domestic dispute.
Tiara Dzikowski, a 34-year-old mother of four children, died during the Dec. 6 ordeal.
The incident unfolded about 10:15 a.m. in the couple’s Battleboro, North Carolina, residence. According to the Nash County Sheriff’s Office, three of the children were in the Pine Street home at the time. They escaped and ran to a house next door. The children told their neighbor that Alexander Dzikowski had stabbed Tiara. The woman died at the scene.
Deputies said at least one of the juveniles witnessed the stabbing, People reported.
“She died a hero,” DaJuan Stroud-Marshall, Tiara Dzikowski’s cousin, told Atlanta Black Star on Monday. “She died saving her children.
“(Deputies) haven’t really given us all of the information because it’s an ongoing investigation,” he added. “But based off what we do know, she was protecting her children, which any mother would do for her child. And ultimately, it cost her her life. But I can say she died a hero.”
Alexander Dzikowski had self-inflicted wounds by the time deputies arrived. He was taken into custody and rushed to UNC-Nash Hospital, then later transferred to an undisclosed medical facility for treatment, deputies said.
Arrest records show Alexander Dzikowski was booked into the Nash County jail Dec. 8 and formally charged with murder and three counts of assault while minor present. He had his first appearance in district court Thursday, Dec. 10. A judge denied bond on all charges, booking records showed.
Tiara Dzikowski was the oldest of several cousins in a small, close-knit family in Prince George’s County, Maryland. She and her husband had been married about seven years and had recently moved to North Carolina.
“Tiara was what we called our ‘chocolate'” Stroud-Marshall said affectionately. “As you can see in some of the pictures, she kept a smile. She was the oldest out of all of us, so she thought she was everybody’s mama. But she was a goofball. All we did was have fun. We joked around, we’d laugh and that’s always what it was.”
Tiara Dzikowski was also a devoted mother. Brittany Judd, one of her other cousins, set up a GoFundMe page to relocate the woman’s kids back to Maryland. The children were identified as Quinton, 12, Xavier, 9, Lexi, 5, and Aries a 4-month-old girl who was born premature. The newborn remained in NICU at a local hospital, according to the page, which had raised little more than $5,000 by Dec. 14.
Stroud-Marshall said Alexander Dzikowski is the biological father of the two younger kids. Lexi, their 5-year-old daughter, had already returned to Maryland and is in an aunt’s custody. The two oldest children remained in North Carolina with their father.
Judd said the family is working with social services to ensure the infant is reunited with family members when she’ released from the hospital.
Relatives said there were no signs of abuse in the couple’s relationship. In fact, Stroud-Marshall said they had just visited family in Maryland on Dec. 5, one day before the slaying. It remains unclear what happened when they returned home to trigger the deadly encounter.
“It literally was just random,” he said. “They had just left that Saturday. They were over my cousin’s house, which is her younger sister. And she said everybody was laughing and joking. Everything seemed fine.”
Now the family’s focus is on providing for Tiara Dzikowski’s children and starting the long journey to help them find healing. Stroud-Marshall urged anyone falling prey to domestic violence to reach out for help.
“He’s a coward,” he said of his cousin’s alleged killer. “I don’t know everything. But I do know, for one, if this is supposed to be the woman you loved who you married, why would you cause harm to her or even try to cause harm to the children? To me, that’s not a real man. A real man wouldn’t do anything like that. And we definitely hope justice is served.”
