Gabriel Thompson grabbed his black, thick-framed glasses by the tape that held them together close to his right temple. He lowered them slightly and pulled a map he had drawn on the back of a prison supply form close to his face. He put the paper down and drew an X in the middle of East 190^th Street in the Bronx. Thompson then grimaced and curled his body over the visiting room table, indicating the X represented where Miguel Lopez fell after being stabbed outside 1013 E. 190^th St. on August 31, 1985. Thompson didn’t say a word, because he couldn’t. Like Lopez, whom he was convicted of murdering 27 years after the fact, Thompson was born deaf.

***

Detective Anthony Padilla, 58, is a large man with no hair and no eyebrows. He wore a purple turtleneck and a black jacket while he sipped a coffee at a restaurant in Morningside Heights in January 2013 and recalled the Thompson investigation. “We get a lot of tips, a lot of calls,” he said, referring to his days in the Cold Case Squad. “When you have cases like this, you have to build [them].”

The original detectives who investigated the stabbing of Miguel Lopez never found a knife. And all the witnesses they interviewed said they did not recognize the killer, so the case went cold back in 1985.

Twenty-one years later, in 2006, Padilla got a call from a woman named Janet Ortiz who said that her boyfriend, Nathaniel Russell, an old friend of Thompson’s, had told her Thompson confessed to him that he murdered Lopez. “This was only third hand information,” said Padilla, who is now retired. “But I decided to look for the old case file.”

Padilla said he read the case file and ran Thompson’s name though several databases and found that he did not have a criminal record.  But Padilla said he had a good feeling about Ortiz’s tip and decided to talk to her in person. He learned that Russell and Thompson had been close friends but had a falling out after Thompson tried to sleep with Ortiz.

Padilla decided to re-interview the witnesses from the original investigation. One of these witnesses was Al Rodriguez. “I read his account from back in 1985,” said Padilla. “And I just had a hunch, man, that he knew who the killer was.”

Padilla tracked Rodriguez down in upstate New York and went to see him. “One of my first questions was, ‘Do you know who killed your friend?’” he said. Rodriguez told Padilla that Gabriel Thompson had done it.

“If I move too fast without getting all my evidence together, then I’m wasting my time,” said Padilla. He said The Bronx Cold Case Squad only had three people at the time so he was working on several cases at once and could not devote all his efforts to finding Thompson.

Padilla said that over the next few years, several people from the Bronx deaf community called him with new information about the case and that in 2010 he got a tip that Thompson was staying with a woman at 3285 Rombouts Avenue in the Bronx, a government housing project for the deaf.  On September 3, 2010, Padilla went to the brick building where the superintendent showed him a guest log where Thompson’s name appeared. The superintendent told Padilla that Thompson drove a black Dodge Durango with Pennsylvania license plates that was parked around the corner.

Padilla decided to “sit on the car” until Thompson showed up, which, according to Arnold Kronick, Thompson’s defense attorney, means he “sat in an unmarked car, drank coffee, and ate doughnuts for as long as it took.”

Thompson showed up that same afternoon with Oscar Marcelino, the boyfriend at the time of Angie Acevedo, the woman with whom Thompson was staying. “[Gabriel] was just quiet, standing there with my ex-boyfriend fixing a car,” wrote Acevedo, who is also deaf. “Then a cop came to see [Gabriel]…. He didn’t know what happened. Police said, ‘Come in car.’”

According to court transcripts, a woman named Wendy Duarte, who also lived in the building, served as an interpreter between Padilla and Thompson. Padilla asked Thompson if he would be willing to come in for questioning and Thompson said yes. Padilla later testified before a grand jury that if Thompson had refused to go, he would not have arrested him and that would have probably been the end of it.

Marcelino decided to go with Thompson and they both got in the backseat of Padilla’s car. Padilla sat in the front seat and his partner drove. The car was originally headed to the 52^nd Precinct, but after Padilla found out there was no sign language interpreter at headquarters, he decided to go to the 109^th precinct in Queens, where Police Officer Julio Vasquez, who is fluent in sign language, was working.

Gabriel Thompson in a taped confession (NYPD | The Uptown Chronicle)

According to Padilla, Thompson had a cup of coffee while he was asked general questions about his health and education, which, through Vasquez, he answered cooperatively. “If you ask someone right away if they killed a person, they’re going to get defensive,” said Padilla. Padilla said he then asked Thompson about the events of August 31, 1985, and that at 9:24 p.m., almost an hour and a half after the interrogation began, Thompson told him that he had stabbed Lopez. The questioning was stopped for four minutes, during which time Thompson had a cigarette and Padilla figured out how to read a deaf man his Miranda rights.

Vasquez told Thompson his rights in sign language and then Thompson signed a written version of them. According to court transcripts, Thompson began working on a written statement summarizing what he had told detectives at 10:05 p.m. He was later taken to Bronx Central Booking where he recorded a video statement and was read his rights again on camera in sign language.

Thompson was charged with murder in the second degree and faced a minimum sentence of 15 years to life and a maximum of 25 to life. Kronick tried to get Thompson’s confession dismissed, claiming there were “questions of thoroughness” concerning Vasquez’s sign language, particularly a couple of instances in which Vasquez did not know the signs for certain words and Thompson had to teach them to him.

According to court transcripts, Vasquez said he knew sign language because his wife was deaf and he had been signing with her for about 18 years. Kronick said there were moments in the interrogation video where there was a lot more signing than talking, but, according to Assistant District Attorney Meredith Holtzman, the prosecutor in the case, when another interpreter looked at the video and made a transcript, it was clear that no important information was lost in translation.

“With my experience, I know that when you do these cases, you have to do it right the first time,” said Padilla. “I’ve been through many trials and I know [the judge] upheld the confession because [Thompson] was read his rights three separate times.”

The court decided Thompson’s confession would be admitted into evidence, and Thompson took a plea deal. Thompson pleaded guilty to manslaughter in the second degree, as opposed to murder, and on September 27, 2012, was sentenced to four to 12 years in prison, depending on his behavior, with no possibility of parole. He is serving his time at Eastern Correctional Facility in Napanoch, in Ulster County, N.Y.

“Usually these cases get solved by new forensic evidence,” said Holtzman. “But this was good old-fashioned detective work.”

***

Black-and-white crime scene photos show dark gray bloodstains on the sidewalk where Thompson drew the X. “They called us from the hospital to let us know he had been stabbed,” said Elizabeth Lopez, Miguel Lopez’s sister, during a phone interview. “When we got there, they took us to a room and told us what had happened. My mother gave a scream I hadn’t heard before—and I haven’t heard since.”

Miguel Lopez was born in Bedford, Conn., where he spent the first two years of his life with his parents, Eliza Cruz and Miguel Angel Lopez, and his sister Elizabeth. According to Elizabeth Lopez, their mother moved to New York City to get away from their father who was verbally abusive to her. Cruz was on welfare and lived in a housing project with Miguel Lopez and his sisters in Brooklyn, before eventually moving to the Bronx. “We used to be real close,” said Elizabeth Lopez. “We were a happy family.”

Although Miguel Lopez was born deaf, his sister said it wasn’t until he was about a year and a half old, when little Miguel did not react to loud noises made behind his back, that their mother realized he couldn’t hear.  Despite her brother’s deafness, Elizabeth Lopez said it was easy to communicate with him because he could read lips, and that he had many friends. “Whenever there was trouble, he was the mediator,” she said.  “Everybody would go to him.”

Lopez went to middle school at JH 47 where, according to his sister, he met the love of his life. Four years later, Lopez and his girlfriend had a baby girl, Cynthia, but the couple soon broke up.

It was also at JH 47 where Lopez met Matilda Ayala, a deaf woman who later became his girlfriend and then, Thompson’s. Thompson said he got to know Ayala because they were both part of the deaf community in the Bronx. Ayala was 20 at the time, had a one-year-old child, and no place to live. Thompson took her in at 422 E. 169^th St. and began what he thought was a monogamous relationship with her.

When interrogated by police in 2010, a quarter century after Lopez’s murder, Thompson said he knew Lopez because he had dated Ayala in the past. Lopez and Ayala were no longer close, however, said Thompson, when he threw a birthday party in December of 1984, at which Lopez showed up, uninvited. Lopez approached Thompson at the party, tapped him on the shoulder and led him to the bathroom where he pulled out a gun from under his shirt. “I told him why did he bring the gun at my birthday party,” Thompson told police. “I told him [to get] out of my home.”

Eight months later, Thompson said, he woke up one morning feeling ill and when he went to Bellevue Hospital he was told he had contracted a sexually transmitted disease. Thompson confronted Ayala about this and she told him she had been having an affair with Lopez and two of his friends, later identified in court documents as simply Frank and Peter.

***

 “At first I thought the Thompson case was a gang-related murder,” said Holtzman, the Assistant District Attorney. Sitting in a large office chair behind her wooden desk, Holtzman explained there were two rival deaf gangs in the Bronx at the time of Lopez’s murder, the Outside Boys, to which she said Lopez belonged, and the Crazy Homicides, Thompson’s gang. But after detectives questioned Thompson in 2010, Holtzman said it became clear the case was not about gang violence, but about a woman: Matilda Ayala.

According to transcripts from the interrogation, Thompson said he was drinking and listening to music with his friends Steven Torres, George Magriz, Hernando “Henry” Lopez, and Eddie Velasquez on the night of August 31, 1985, when they saw Miguel Lopez walk out of 1013 E. 190^th St., where he was buying crack from his friend Al Rodriguez.

Henry Lopez had heard Miguel Lopez was also having an affair with his girlfriend, Lillian Gonzales, and decided to confront him. The three began to argue and Thompson said he saw Lopez reach toward his lower back, the same area where he kept the gun the night of the party. Fearing for his life, Thompson stabbed Lopez in the chest and ran away. “I was scared, I was scared,” said Thompson during interrogation. “My arm just went straight out.”

Holtzman said she believes Thompson and his friends followed Lopez to 1013 E. 190^th St. and attacked him.  According to court documents, Al Rodriguez saw one of Thompson’s friends grab Lopez from behind and restrain him while Thompson stabbed him, but Rodriguez was afraid to tell authorities because Thompson had threatened to kill him if he did.

***

Gabriel Thompson was born in the Bronx on December 11, 1963. He grew up with his mother, Gladys, his younger brother, David, and his grandfather, Humberto. Thompson said he was the best wrestler at Lexington High School for the deaf in Queens. A black-and-white picture from the time shows a teenage Thompson standing with his legs slightly apart, knees bent, looking straight into the camera, ready to fight.

A friend of Thompson’s from high school, who is also deaf and wished not to be identified, pounded her fists loudly on the common room table at 3285 Rombouts Ave. when she heard Thompson was in prison for murder. She let out a frantic wail and attempted to speak very slowly, opening her mouth wide. “He so nice,” she said.

Angie Acevedo, the friend with whom Thompson was staying when he was arrested, wrote, “He is very smart person since I know him,” and said through an interpreter that the only reason Thompson ran into trouble was because he grew up in a bad neighborhood.

Thompson left the neighborhood in 1986, a year after the murder, when he moved to Washington, D.C. to attend Gallaudet University, where he studied business administration for three months before he had to drop out because his father could not afford to pay his tuition anymore. It was at Gallaudet, or “Gally,” as he called it in the 2012 prison interview, that Thompson met Andrea Velez, a woman who would become his wife.

Thompson and Velez, who could hear, moved to Queens after Thompson dropped out of Gallaudet. Thompson said he was on disability but worked whenever he could, mostly as a mailroom clerk in Midtown Manhattan.

Thompson and Velez were married in 1991. They had four daughters: Maybelle, now 20, Jacqueline, 18, Gladys, 16, and Velancia, 5.

According to Thompson, he and Velez separated in 2005 and he moved to Lancaster, Pa., because a friend told him of a place there where he could stay. In Lancaster, Thompson said he first worked in the cleaning service at a hospital but didn’t like it. He quit and began doing odd jobs through Labor Ready, a temporary labor agency. In 2007, Thompson and Velez divorced.

Thompson stayed in Lancaster until 2010 when he decided to go visit a friend in the Bronx. He said he had only been in New York for about a month when Padilla approached him on Rombouts Avenue.

***

Eastern Correctional Facility (Photo by Jordi Oliveres | The Uptown Chronicle)

Thompson held up a pencil in his right hand and rubbed his graying stubble with his left. After thinking for a moment, he drew two groups of circles on the map of the crime scene—one to the west of 1013 E. 190^th St. and one behind it. With the help of his illustration, Thompson, prisoner 12R3158 at Eastern Correctional, was preparing to tell a new version of the events of August 31, 1985, contradicting the one he originally told detectives.

“I’m innocent,” he wrote on the paper. “Eddie did it to save my life.”

As in his original story, Thompson said he was hanging out close to 1013 E. 190^th St. with Steven Torres, George Magriz, Henry Lopez—he was not related to the victim—and Eddie Velasquez, when they saw Miguel Lopez leave the building. As he said in the original account, Thompson said Henry approached Miguel Lopez to confront him about the affair he was having with his girlfriend. Thompson said he and Velasquez followed Henry in case he needed help but that they had no personal grudge against Miguel Lopez. In his new version of events, Thompson denied that Matilda was cheating on him with Lopez.

Thompson said that Velasquez stood behind Miguel Lopez while he and Henry stood in front of him. Thompson said the argument escalated and that Velasquez saw Miguel reach behind his back for what he thought was a gun. Velasquez then stabbed Miguel who, Thompson believed, otherwise would have shot them. Thompson said he went straight home and that Miguel was still alive and standing when he left. He said another friend of his, Willie Martinez, saw Miguel walk to the sidewalk, where he collapsed, and that a group of people who had been standing behind the building, led by Al Rodriguez, showed up at the scene and beat him up and took his gun before police and paramedics arrived.

Thompson said the discrepancies between his two accounts were a result of how confused he was by what he considered to be Officer Vasquez’s poor interpreting skills, and that Eddie Velasquez could not vouch for the new version of the events because he died in 1995.

Padilla said that Thompson’s new account is not true and that none of the witnesses identified Velasquez as the person who attacked Miguel Lopez.

***

In order to communicate with prison guards and other inmates, Thompson said he relies on reading lips because there are not many prisoners who use sign language at Eastern. When he gets out, Thompson said he is going to go straight home. “Homesick,” he wrote on the map.

But the fact that Thompson will get out at all troubles Elizabeth Lopez. “I talked to the judge and the lawyers and I said that I felt that what he got would not be enough in my heart because he got to live and enjoy life when my brother was dead and buried and he didn’t get to enjoy anything,” she said. “He should’ve gotten the maximum…. [He] should not be able to get out of prison and should suffer the full extent of the law.”

***

A resigned sort of sadness was as palpable in the visiting room at Eastern New York Correctional as it was in Elizabeth Lopez’s voice, but it was an old picture Holtzman placed on her desk that really underscored the tragedy of Thompson’s crime. It was a mid-range shot from a holiday party in 1984. On the left stood Lopez, a handsome young father with light skin, a full, neat beard, and a mischievous charm in his eyes. Next to him was another young man with jet-black hair and a wrestler’s body that had not yet given way to a defeated middle-aged slouch. Thompson and Lopez stood side by side in colorful Christmas sweaters, embracing, smiling at what they must have thought was a bright future.

“… [It has been] one of my biggest wonders for the pass few years. Like how could I just manage to kill the one person that was the exact opposite of me and you know in the sense its like the devil killing GOD. Not that Im pure evil but yet at the same time I am a long way from innocence and I…remember that disaster like it was yesterday. No regard or care for the public, just taking total advantage of society (Robbery after Robbery)…a good morning just turned into a bad crime but never actually seen them coming and bout time I realize things went wrong it was too late. (Sirens) commands. Pull over, step out the vehicle with ya hands up. Driver you first and he complied then passenger you next and I just burned rubber. No real wonders, just thinking nah I cant go back to jail. Its the summer and honestly [I would have rather] died in the moment than just give up at the time and for a minute even caught myself wondering wheather that one bullet in the chamber of my gun was the answer to my problems…Didn’t care if I died, I was tired so I made my bed and nowdays Im just laying in it but now that I take this stroll, down these sad memories of a lane…Im mad that I cant just change things and that I brought such innocent people so much pain. Then its always the thought. What if it was just all kids in that cross walk. I left that sweet lady to die. I wish I could have atleast held her before she went so she could have looked in the eyes of her killer. Not that it was intentional but then again it wasn’t far from it. I send my sincere apologies to her and her family though.”

– Portion of a letter on December 9, 2012 from Dyson Williams, sentenced 17 years to life in Great Meadow Prison, Comstock NY, on charges of murder for the vehicular death of Sister Mary Celine Graham in Harlem on June 22, 2010.

***

They stepped out of the convent in Harlem at 8:40 a.m., walking slowly on West 124^th street, then around Marcus Garvey Park and onto West 122^nd street straight to Lenox Avenue. They were going to visit Sam Morjaria, a physical therapist, just like they did every Tuesday for the past six months. Patricia Cruz, an aide at Partners In Care, had her arm around Sister Mary Celine Graham. It was June 22, 2010.

Sister Celine, 83, was suffering from the effects of a stroke and had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. She walked with a cane rather than use a wheelchair, said Cruz. So the walk became long and tiresome. Her appointment wasn’t until 9:30 a.m.

Sister Celine was beloved in the community (Photo courtesy of Miriam Kisch | The Uptown Chronicle)

Before visiting Morjaria, Sister Celine would always shine her black shoes and wear navy blue sweatpants underneath her nun’s habit, said Cruz. On a typical day, children would run up to her and strangers would ask her for prayers. Nearly everyone in the neighborhood seemed to know her. A smile would cross her face. Then, after the visit – for which she was always on time – she would want to take the bus back to the convent and sit next to the window so she could enjoy the view.

But June 22 wasn’t a typical day. At 9:28, Morjaria said in an interview in the late fall of 2012 that he heard a loud crash, which he later learned was the sound of a blue Chrysler Pacifica colliding with a Honda Odyssey. When 9:30 came and went he didn’t worry that Sister Celine wasn’t in his office. He figured that for once, she would miss her appointment. All he knew was that Lenox Avenue had become chaotic. He heard sirens, and the street was closed, so he remained in his office.

That afternoon he got a call. It was from Sister Marie Mannix. In a soft and calm voice, she said Sister Celine had died. “The Lord works in mysterious ways,” Morjaria recounted her saying. He sat in disbelief at the receptionist’s desk. The office fell silent.

***

Dyson Williams at his arraignment in the death of Sister Celine (Photo from DNAinfo | The Uptown Chronicle)

Earlier in the day, which was mild and clear, Dyson Williams, 20, and William Robbins, 18, had committed three armed robberies, according to court documents. The spree began early in the morning at 1:25 a.m. with Williams pointing a silver handgun at a man walking on Lenox Avenue. He threatened to kill him if he didn’t hand over his cash and a Blackberry. At 3:40 a.m., Robbins pointed the same gun at another victim, again demanding property. This time, it included an iPod. Then at 9:20, Williams, with the gun still in hand, took a backpack from a third victim.

It was this third victim, according to court documents, who called the police. NYPD officers caught and stopped a van at West 142^nd off Seventh Avenue. They ordered the two men to step out of the Chrysler. Robbins, who was driving, obeyed but Williams slid over to the driver’s seat and sped off. Multiple police units pursued the car as it headed south toward Lenox Avenue. Williams weaved in and out of busy traffic, crossing the divider several times, driving southbound in northbound lanes, and accelerating until he was driving twice the speed limit.

At the intersection of West 122^nd Street and Lenox Avenue, Williams ran a red light and crashed into the Odyssey, which hit Sister Celine and Cruz and three others. Sister Celine later died at Harlem Hospital. Cruz was in critical condition.

***

In the month leading up to the accident, Williams lived with his aunt, Angela Jones, at Mount Morris Park West in Harlem, staying with her because he didn’t want to stay with his father, she said.

To her, Williams was a thoughtful and quiet young man who loved to write. “He was generous, always respectful – never talked foul or cursed,” Jones said in the living room of her home, which was decorated with photos of her two young children. “He’s a provider. He takes care of his family. I never even saw him in a fight. He never harmed anyone.”

Williams enjoyed writing essays and poems. He wrote a series of topical poems for Valentine’s Day, and poems for his mother and grandmother on Mother’s Day, said his defense attorney, Norman Williams, who is not related to Dyson Williams.

“That was the first thing he exposed me to,” Norman Williams said over the phone. “And the thing that he did that made me think maybe he does have a brain in there: he started writing…Take a bunch of subjects and write a critical essay about it.”

Norman Williams said that in an essay, Dyson Williams discussed the type of emotions that keep people from their full potential when they are mired in street life. He wrote about the emotional damage it caused families.

“He’s not the oldest guy in the world. But he’s one of the old soul types of guys,” Norman Williams said. “Like, man please, slow down. He’s a bright guy, charismatic guy.”

Jones had that same impression of the young man, which was why she said she was shocked to hear the police knocking on her door on that fateful day. Earlier, sometime between 9:30 and 10 a.m., Dyson Williams calmly walked into Jones’s apartment and then into his bedroom. He changed his clothes and walked back out the door. A couple of hours later, Jones said, police were at her doorstep. When they told her about what Dyson Williams was accused of doing, she blurted out, “Whaat!” She didn’t have anything else to say.

Police tracked him down with a cell phone sensor, which pinpointed an apartment building complex in Harlem. He was at his girlfriend’s place, said Norman Williams, and the police were right outside the window.

After her nephew was arrested, Jones’s home was searched by police for two days as they looked for evidence, such as a gun. They came up empty-handed, Jones said, because her nephew “didn’t do anything here, and I don’t have anything to hide.”

But on June 22, Dyson Williams apparently showed he was capable of committing great violence. “When you kill a nun, it’s got a funny way of, aw man, you just killed a nun,” said his defense attorney. “He just killed a nun.”

***

A box of Hershey’s chocolates was Sister Celine’s “seal on her vocation – that God wanted her to be a nun,” said Sister Loretta Theresa Richards. In 1948, Sister Celine was feeling homesick after receiving her nun’s habit from the Franciscan Handmaids of the Most Pure Heart of Mary, one of three all-black convents in the United States.

She particularly missed her favorite Hershey’s chocolates from home. In the ceremonial room, there was a small closet in the corner, which was used for crying so the other nuns wouldn’t be disrupted. Sister Celine sat in there. The next morning, Sister Celine got a box of Hershey’s bars at the front door. It was an incident to which she often referred.

Sister Loretta and Sister Celine were close friends (Photo by Tiffany Lew | The Uptown Chronicle)

Throughout Sister Celine’s life, her love of God appeared to compel her to reach out to others despite her shy disposition, said Sister Loretta. When Herbert Delancey was three years old doctors thought he was mentally challenged and his parents left him with Sister Celine at the convent.  She became his godmother, and he lived and traveled with her from 1970 through 1981. He credits her with providing a normal home life and a daily, structured, balanced schedule. Each day, dinner was at 5 p.m. Then 6 or 7 was either deviated to homework time or piano, soccer, or basketball practice. Between 8:30 p.m. and 9, but no later than 9, lights were out.

When Jane Vigilotti had to quickly leave home because of a difficult family situation during college, Sister Celine allowed her to stay at the convent. Vigilotti, 46, said she sporadically made small rental payments to the convent during her four and a half years at Fordham University, but Sister Celine never asked for the money even though Vigilotti’s room could have been rented out for the full amount.

When Vigilotti’s cousin, Miriam Kisch, now 41, wanted to take ballet lessons, go rollerblading, or visit Rye Playland, Sister Celine would drive her and the other children. Kisch said she would not have had these childhood experiences without Sister Celine and the convent. She also remembers learning skills that she used in everyday life. She would watch Sister Celine in the laundry room folding clothes and towels, and she learned how to iron the pleats in her Catholic school uniform.

These children of the convent, along with six others who kept in touch over the years, became known as the “Convent Kids.” Their fond memories of life at the convent and Sister Celine bind them.

They also remembered that despite her compassion, she was a very strict teacher with a wry sense of humor. She once taught geography at Christ the King School in High Point, NC. During the summers, she was the director of Camp St. Edward on Staten Island.

The camp children would pile into the back of a Ford station wagon, said Vigilotti. Delancey would draw a detailed map of the subway system, and they would all talk about how to get to different destinations.

“We’d be so excited and go ‘Yay!’ And Sister Celine would come over and say, ‘All right, over the summer you’re going to be writing an essay for me.’ She was tough,” Vigilotti said over the phone. “She would lay down the law. ‘Ohhh! Here comes Sister Celine,’ we’d say. It wasn’t until later on that I realized how cool of a person she was.”

Sister Celine’s faith in Herbert Delancey paid off for him (Photo by Tiffany Lew | The Uptown Chronicle)

Sister Celine strongly valued education, said Delancey. Her saying was, “an idle mind is the devil’s workshop.” Her strict and organized behavior in the classroom inspired not only him, but also Vigilotti, and Kisch. In college, Delancey majored in geography with a concentration in urban planning at North Carolina Central University. In graduate school, he majored in educational media and instructional design. He said both majors were directly influenced by Sister Celine.

“At eight to nine years old, I’d sit around and look at maps,” Delancey said in a café in Morningside Heights. “Sister Celine would lend maps to me from her classroom and return them when I was finished. I was always surrounded by them.”

Vigilotti and Kisch also were influenced by the creativity and discipline in Sister Celine’s classrooms. She taught at St. Benedict’s Day Nursery in the 1980s, and both women took what they could learn from her, including how to decorate and organize bulletin boards, write a lesson plan, and ask children to finish their vegetables. But she also just had that innate aura that drew children to her no matter what, they said.

“There were times during the day, she would say ‘Who wants to sit in my lap,’” Vigilotti said. “And those kids would run each other over to sit in her lap. As strict as she was, they just loved to be on her lap. They loved her.”

Vigilotti and Kisch both became teachers and credit their professions to Sister Celine. Like a parent, the nun was present at every stage of their lives, a witness to all their milestones: baptism, first communion, confirmation, high school graduation, and college graduation.

Sister Celine was also considered a family member to her aide, Patricia Cruz. The two had been side by side since 2004. “I think of her as my own mother because my mother passed away, and I couldn’t take care of her,” Cruz said over the phone. “I would give Sister Celine a shower. I would clean her whole bedroom. I would give her her medication. I would take care of her diet. I was her second hand.”

Cruz said that Sister Celine was so considerate that every time she left the convent and traveled back home to Brooklyn, her phone would ring with Sister Celine’s voice or she would leave a message on her answering machine, asking if Cruz returned safely.

When Cruz re-gained consciousness in the emergency room after the accident, the first thing she asked for was Sister Celine. She said she became angry when no one would tell her where Sister Celine was or what happened to her. When the priest at the hospital let slip that he was attending a funeral, Cruz said she knew through gut instinct that it was for the nun she loved.

A month after the accident, when she got back home, she listened to her phone messages. Sister Celine’s soft voice floated through the rooms of her house, asking if she was okay. For a moment, Cruz could see Sister Celine’s round, kind, face. And for a moment, she thought she might still be alive.

***

On May 8, 2012, Dyson Williams pleaded guilty in the New York State Supreme Court to Murder in the Second Degree, Robbery in the First Degree, and Assault in the First Degree. The verdict was 17 years to life. Senior Trial Counsel and Assistant District Attorney Peter Casolaro prosecuted the case with assistance from Assistant District Attorney Marc Krupnick.

It was an intense plea appearance, with family members becoming emotional, said Norman Williams. Dyson Williams’ brother, Justice, couldn’t stand still. “He was pacing and just walking the hallways and I called at him and made him sit down next to me,” said Norman Williams. “He just calmed down and cried. It was the worst. Once he got done crying, one of my colleagues – not really somebody that I know that well – came over to him and gave him some encouraging words. His brother actually appreciated it. And his face brightened up a bit.”

Norman Williams said he felt the verdict was harsh. “His actions were very reckless. They were intentional. The point at which he lost control and the amount of physical damage that he did was substantial,” he said. “But 17 to life is just too much. You’re taking a person out of a community when he’s really young and he’s going to be put back well through his forties.”

Norman Williams also said that Dyson Williams had expressed to him remorse about the accident, saying that any “street cred” he was getting was ridiculous because a person had died.

***

When asked what Sister Celine would say today about the man sentenced to prison for her death, Sister Loretta said, “She would have compassion for Dyson Williams and say, well, something went wrong.”

Delancey’s most vivid memory of the woman who was like a mother to him, was when they would encounter a particular fork in the highway on their way home from one of the many trips they took together. He, at eight years old, sat in the back seat of a sky blue Dodge with a large foldout map across his lap. Sister Celine drove; relying on her navigator, Delancey, for directions. On I-95, Delancey always fell asleep, but right where the highway forked off – to Pennsylvania on the left and to New Jersey on the right – he always woke up, and just in time. “No!” he’d have to say to Sister Celine. “To the right. We’re going to Jersey.” And Sister Celine would swiftly steer to the right and safely guide the car home.

George Talavera’s cell phone kept ringing. Ringing, ringing, ringing. All Alberto Vasquez could do was sit and watch the phone jiggle as it vibrated on the blood-splattered hardwood floor. As much as Vasquez wanted to pick it up, the police told him no. Vasquez knew who was calling – Laura Cassimere, the mother of Talavera’s only daughter, Nylah. It was around 3 a.m. on Christmas morning 2009 and Cassimere hadn’t heard from Talavera all night. Vasquez just wanted to answer the phone to tell her, Talavera was dead.

Just an hour earlier, Cassimere’s boyfriend had been stabbed to death in the face and neck by a man Talavera had met just that night. Talavera was only 33. Things had been rough at home with Cassimere, but it was Christmas, he should have called.

As detectives conducted interviews with 11 witnesses at the Bronx house party, Vasquez sat in the living room with the bloodied body of Talavera, his friend of 14 years. The apartment looked like a scene from a slasher film. Crime scene photos showed Talavera’s blood was everywhere – trickling down the white walls and ceiling, seeping into couch cushions, smeared on the wall from where he slid to the ground in his final moments, and pooled around his head and under towels, which friends used in vain to stop the bleeding. A city medical examiner would later note four stab wounds, including the fatal blow that sliced open Talavera’s left ear and plunged into the left side of his neck, cutting through his carotid artery.

Three years later while sitting in his Parkchester apartment in the Bronx, just two doors down from the scene of Talavera’s murder, Vasquez shook his head. “We had to sit there for six hours…. They didn’t cover the body or anything.”  And there was the phone, a memory that wouldn’t go away.

…

David Delgado is serving 25 years for George Talavera’s death. (NYPD | The Uptown Chronicle)

The house on Wheeler. When George Talavera’s two younger sisters say it, they mean the good times. “The best times of our lives,” Sharine Talavera, 34, said in a recent interview. In the house on Wheeler, the family left behind the days when their mother kicked out their father because he wasn’t bringing home enough money to fund her crack addiction. From 2000-2006, most of the family was under one roof at 1149 Wheeler Ave., getting along, taking care of each other.

Talavera, Sharine and her children, youngest sister Taniell, their father, George, Sr., and Taniell’s boyfriend Dieter all lived in the two-story brick home in the Soundview section of the Bronx. “We didn’t have that much space but we all wanted to be together,” Sharine said.

In the mornings, Talavera would go to the bakery to buy coffee and breakfast for everyone. Sometimes on the weekends, he would spontaneously call everyone for a barbecue at Pelham Bay Park. During Christmas, Talavera and his father decorated the home; they always insisted on having a real Christmas tree.

“We don’t do those things no more,” Sharine said. “[George] was the one that brought the spirit. He did everything, he put it all together.” If it wasn’t for her husband, Sharine said, she wouldn’t celebrate Christmas at all anymore.

Talavera’s sisters and friends practically worshipped their brother George – “Sosa” to friends and family. When they talk about him, they tell superhero stories. After a day of fishing Talavera would make a habit of handing out striped bass from a bucket to people around the Parkchester apartments. He once pulled a woman out of a burning house, his sisters said. He comforted a little girl on the street after she was hit by a car and brought her a chocolate teddy bear in the hospital the next day.

More than 60 people came to Talavera’s Bronx funeral at R G Ortiz Funeral Home – his sisters said there were many they had never met before. They came with more stories. One man, who worked at the Key Foods grocery store where Talavera shopped, told Sharine that George wanted to buy school books for Talavera’s daughter. Talavera would have done the same for him, he told her.

“That’s how he was, he was a superhero, he was that type of person,” Taniell said in a phone interview in December 2012. “He was there to help people.”

When other boys his age were still picking on girls, George Talavera became a protector and provider for his two younger sisters. When Talavera was 11 years old, Sharine said he started buying groceries on his way home from school. Sometimes he would wake the girls up in the middle of the night with a bag of food from Wendy’s. “C’mon, you have to eat,” he would say.

George Talavera, an avid fisherman, had dreams of moving to Miami. (Sharine Talavera | The Uptown Chronicle)

As the sisters got older, Talavera kept a close watch on the men in their lives. Sharine said when she introduced her future husband to Talavera, he let him know what she meant to him “My brother was really tough on him, but my husband took that as a sign of respect,” Sharine said. “He said he would have done the same thing if he had a sister.”

Family and friends said George Talavera was completely devoted to his first and only child, Nylah. They said he would have done anything for her. Talavera’s compulsion to protect the women in his life was seen by those closest to him as loving and honorable, an extension of Talavera’s outgoing, family-man personality. But one man wouldn’t see it that way.

…

 When he arrived at the Christmas party in 2009, David Delgado said he reached out to shake George Talavera’s hand, but only got a threat in return: “I’m going to mess you up if you mess with her.” Delgado later testified those were the first words Talavera said to him when he walked into the party at 2033 McGraw Ave. The woman to whom Talavera referred was Carmen Matos, known as Margie, a longtime friend of Talavera’s he knew from the neighborhood. She was Delgado’s new girlfriend.

“It wasn’t meant to be a threat,” said Alberto Vasquez, now 50. “He said it with good intentions, but [Delgado] took real offense to that.”

“Sosa was just being the friendly guy that he was,” testified Melissa Dempsey, Vasquez’s common-law wife. “He met David for the first time at that party. He knew Margie for a lot of years and he was telling David that this is a good woman, take care of her. That’s the only thing.”

Matos had started seeing Delgado five months before the party. They met at a laundromat in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, where Delgado worked. When Matos’s neighbor Carmen Diaz invited Matos to her party, Matos said she was excited to go because she had never been to a house party before. Diaz told her to bring her new boyfriend, too.

After the cold exchange with Talavera, Delgado said everything at the party was fine. He said he wasn’t angry, but he hadn’t wanted to be at the party in the first place. Neither did Talavera. Both men were spending Christmas away from their kids, away from their families. Delgado later testified, “I didn’t want to go because I wasn’t feeling right. I had called [Puerto Rico], I spoke to my kids and I spoke to my mom.”

Talavera wasn’t in the party spirit either, friends and family later said in interviews. Even though he was drinking and mingling, Talavera was masking his depression, Vasquez said. He wanted to be home with his daughter. Partygoers recalled that Talavera kept talking about the iPod and phone he bought for Nylah for Christmas that year. “He couldn’t wait to get back to see his daughter,” Vasquez said.

Talavera and his girlfriend, Laura Cassimere, 28, had been fighting. Talavera wasn’t working at the time and it was causing tension between the couple. Taniell Talavera said that while Cassimere worked, George turned his attention completely to his daughter. “Georgie was brushing his daughter’s hair and getting her to school in the morning,” she said. “Everybody was having a tough time getting a job in New York.”

Taniell said in an interview that she didn’t know what happened between Talavera and Cassimere that Christmas. Whatever it was, Talavera’s friends at the party said he was clearly upset.

Delgado spent most of the evening just talking to Matos or smoking cigarettes in the kitchen with some of the guys, witnesses later testified. Those who knew him said he was a quiet person who kept to himself.

The rest of the night went smoothly. There was dancing, music, drinks. Three kids were watching TV on the couch, while the adults mingled and laughed.

Talavera, who had been drinking before the party, according to Vasquez, kept the rum and sodas coming. “[He] was extremely intoxicated. He got there intoxicated. He could barely walk,” Vasquez later testified.

At around 11 p.m. Matos and Delgado went to get some cranberry juice from Matos’s apartment in the adjacent building. Delgado later testified that’s when he grabbed the knife from his girlfriend’s kitchen. “I had it just for my security, but my intention wasn’t to strike him, that wasn’t my intention,” Delgado said. “I just had it for my safety if he would pull something.”

The knife used to kill Talavera was never found, but those at the party who saw it said it was no ordinary kitchen knife. After Delgado returned to the party, he went into the kitchen to smoke another cigarette. That’s when Vasquez said Delgado pulled up his shirt to reveal a knife tucked in his waistband. Vasquez said it looked something like a push dagger – a T-handled knife in which the blade protrudes between two fingers of a balled fist. That description would be consistent with several witnesses who testified that Delgado stabbed Talavera with a punching motion.

When Vasquez saw the weapon he said he told Delgado, “’You’re in a safe place. You don’t need to feel threatened, look at all the kids.”

Vasquez later said in an interview, “That dude had a jail mentality…. He was locked up in his head, you could see it in his face.”

But Talavera was no stranger to the streets either. Dieter Ramos, Taniell’s husband, said Talavera was a street-smart guy. “He let his guard down. He’s a wise person. He was surrounded by people that he knew, so he let his guard down,” Dieter said in a phone interview. “He was very intelligent and streetwise. Growing up in the Bronx, you have certain skills.”

At one point in the party, Matos took Talavera into her apartment in the next building over to “take a rest.” He was getting louder and drunker. They returned 20 minutes later.

Delgado was getting tipsy, too. “My head was kind of spinning,” he testified. Delgado also said that he was taking Abilify – an antidepressant drug that can compound the effects of alcohol.

He told Matos he wanted to leave as Talavera was returning to the party.

What happened in the next few seconds is still unclear. The music was loud, witnesses said, and it was hard to hear what words were exchanged. Everyone who saw the incident gave a slightly different take in police and court statements. Delgado gave two versions of the story: A day after the stabbing he told police that Talavera grabbed his arm as he tried to leave. Twenty months later at his trial, Delgado said Talavera was cocking his hand for a punch.

Dempsey testified that she saw Delgado approach Talavera unprovoked.

Matos said she saw Talavera push Delgado on the shoulder.

Gabriella Dumas, the 14-year-old daughter of another partygoer, told police she heard Talavera call Delgado a “cool dude,” then Delgado turned to strike.

Other witnesses testified that Talavera told Delgado once again not to mess with Matos.

In the trial, it would be irrelevant. “It didn’t matter if he was facing him or not, this was not a case of self-defense,” said Bronx County assistant district attorney Paul Rosenfeld, who prosecuted the case.

Whatever Talavera did, it’s clear how Delgado reacted: he delivered four blows with the knife to Talavera’s face, head, and neck. It was quick, almost over before people started yelling. Delgado said he never felt the knife enter Talavera’s flesh, but he knew he hit him. The men fell onto the living room couch. Vasquez quickly pulled Delgado away. “Just move,” he said he told him.

Talavera sat on the couch, stunned, witnesses recalled. He had noticeable puncture wounds on his nose and neck, but for a moment, there was no blood.

Then blood began spurting from his wounds. “Like those kung-fu movies,” Vasquez later said in an interview. Talavera got up from the couch. “I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe.”

“It looked like he was in shock, like he didn’t know what was going on,” Vasquez said. “He was bleeding. He was shaking.”

Talavera staggered backwards towards the living room wall. Blood from his carotid artery on the left side of his neck sprayed over the children sitting around the couch. Talavera backed up against the white dining-area wall and slid down.

Arileida Jimenez told police she never saw the fight. From the kitchen she heard Talavera say he couldn’t breathe, so she ran over and gave him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

Delgado bolted. Matos followed. Vasquez chased them outside, but Delgado got away and hopped a taxi to Brooklyn. The kids were ushered into the hall while Carmen Diaz called 911.

“I need an ambulance, he’s bleeding a lot,” she screamed to the operator at 2:09 a.m. Crying children and yelling adults were clearly audible in the 911 recording. Vasquez returned to the apartment, then went back outside to wait for the ambulance. He called 911 again 10 minutes later: “Somebody get here already, he’s dying…I think he may be already dead.”

The medics arrived to find Delgado on the floor, arms and legs spread with towels around his neck. They cut open his beige sweater and camouflage thermal shirt and tried to revive him, but it was too late. He had lost too much blood. Talavera was pronounced dead at the scene at 2:29 a.m.

…

George Talavera raised his younger sisters Sharine and Taniell Ramos (Sharine Talavera | The Uptown Chronicle)

“We remember that night like it was yesterday,” said Talavera’s sister, Taniell Ramos. The phone rang around 3 a.m., waking Taniell and her husband Dieter from a deep sleep in their Allentown, Pa. home. Dieter answered the phone – it was George’s girlfriend, Laura Cassimere. She was screaming, hysterical. Somebody had killed George.

“I heard it and jumped out of bed and ran upstairs to tell my brother Ethan,” Taniell said in a phone interview. Taniell and Dieter then got in the car and drove the 106 miles to the Bronx.

The family left Allentown at 3:30 a.m. Christmas morning and made it to New York by sunrise. They went directly to the 43rd Precinct where a detective confirmed Talavera’s death.

The officers wouldn’t tell the family where George’s body was, but Taniell said she knew he was probably with friends in Parkchester. They drove there and saw the cruisers and ambulances. “We knew we had the right place,” she said. They walked into 2033 McGraw.

“We heard these big bangs coming down the stairs,” Dieter said. It was EMS responders bringing Talavera down on a gurney. “He was so tall he didn’t fit in the elevator.”

The EMS responders stopped in the hallway. Taniell and Dieter touched the black bag containing Talavera’s body and recited the family prayer, Psalm 23. The medics allowed the couple to stay with the body for a few minutes before it was carted away.

“And that was it,” Taniell said.

…

Humberto Baez said in a December 2012 interview that he prides himself on knowing what’s happening on his block. He’s been in Brooklyn’s Sunset Park neighborhood his entire life. He grew up in the house next to the one he lives in now, practically in the shadows of the elevated Gowanus Expressway.

On the day after Christmas 2009, Baez was sweeping up outside his three-story building when he got a text from a neighbor saying there were police in the area.

Soon after Baez spotted Detective Kenneth Banker and three other plain clothes officers getting out of a car. Banker approached and said he was looking for David Delgado. Police reports show Banker had just come from the home of Guillermo and Matilde Serrano – Delgado’s aunt and uncle. Even though they lived only a few blocks away from where Delgado was staying, the Serranos said they hadn’t talked to their nephew in three years.

David Delgado was arrested in this Brooklyn house the day after he killed George Talavera. (Bryan Cohen | The Uptown Chronicle)

Banker showed Baez Delgado’s picture. Police records show Banker had used Matos’s Facebook account to get a picture, then showed it to witnesses of Talavera’s death to confirm it was Delgado. Baez said Delgado was inside.

Delgado was taken into custody without incident. When Banker brought him down the stairs in handcuffs, Baez said he tried to ask his friend in Spanish what had happened. But the police pushed Delgado out the door before they could talk.

“I was caught by surprise,” Baez said. “[Delgado] was living a simple life.”

Baez grew up with Delgado in Sunset Park. “The number one goal for every man here is to get respect and to have honor,” he said.

Baez said he and Delgado had similar childhoods. While they weren’t close friends, Baez said they ran in the same circles, getting into fights, trying to stay afloat in a neighborhood full of violence. “Deuce was always a straight up guy to me,” Baez said. After their teenage years the two saw each other less frequently. Then in June 2009, six months before Talavera’s death, Delgado moved into the three-unit Sunset Park home owned by Baez.

By his own account, Delgado had a rough childhood. While on trial for Talavera’s murder, Delgado testified that he had been molested by his stepfather for two years while his mother refused to intervene. When he was 14, he said he tried to commit suicide because “I was ashamed of myself and I always thought I wasn’t worth nothing.” He tried again at 25, and again at 32. Those attempts were fueled by circumstances surrounding the mother of his children, he said at trial, adding that once he saw her with another man. Delgado also testified he is diagnosed as bi-polar, and takes mood stabilizers and anti-depressants. He testified that he’s been in and out of mental health facilities most of his life.

Efforts to reach Delgado in prison and efforts to reach his family in Puerto Rico were unsuccessful. Matos said she was unaware of any family members living in the U.S. In the time they were together, Matos said Delgado rarely spent time with anyone else. “He was very quiet, very calm,” Matos said in a phone interview. “Never violent, very friendly. Good looking.” They exchanged numbers and started hanging out at Matos’s Parkchester apartment.

Robert Cantor, Delgado’s public defender, said his client was a tough guy, a street guy with street sense. “He was kind to Margie,” Cantor said. “He’s not a psychopath, maybe a sociopath.”

Baez said in the six months that Delgado was renting from him, he never had a problem with Delgado or ever saw him become aggressive. Baez didn’t know what could have set Delgado off the night he killed Talavera. He said he was unaware Delgado had children in Puerto Rico or suffered from depression.

“Two lives are lost and in the end you and I are on the hook as taxpayers,” Baez said. “Does [Delgado] need help or incarceration? He’s going to live, and he’s going to get out, and he’s going to be worse.”

…

 Nobody took the stand on behalf of David Delgado, whose trial on manslaughter charges began on June 13, 2012.  The four eyewitnesses all said Delgado killed George Talavera. No one said it was self-defense, not even Delgado. Defense attorney Robert Cantor said that made it a strong case for the prosecution.

The trial lasted almost a month. At the end, Delgado, now 38, was convicted and sent to the Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, N.Y. Judge Dominic Massaro gave Delgado the maximum sentence: 25 years in prison. The earliest he’ll get out is May 2031.

Melissa Dempsey said her kids and the others at the party that Christmas still have nightmares. But that hasn’t kept her daughter Yvonne Vasquez from wanting to be a police officer or a district attorney.

Since the murder, Carmen Diaz has moved out of the apartment where Talavera was murdered. Dempsey and Vasquez stayed down the hall. They said Diaz’s apartment is still empty. Talavera’s sisters, Sharine and Taniell, are trying to keep their family strong, like in the good times. “We’re getting there, little by little,” Sharine said. “At least this year we got the verdict.”

Nylah Talavera, now 14, won’t get her father’s fishing expertise. She won’t get to hear any more superhero stories. And, at least in the near future, she won’t get her Christmas.

“I just sat there crying on Christmas Day,” she wrote in her court statement. “From that day on I hated Christmas, wanting nothing to do with it because on Christmas all I think about is my dad. I hate Christmas and I always will.”

Despite the still fresh wounds of Talavera’s death, the holiday season of 2012 was a little brighter for the family: Sharine had her firstborn child – a son. He was born a week before Christmas. His name is George.

Heavy humid air had settled over the Bronx on the evening of August 16, 2009 when Ahamadou Ndiaye planned to visit the office of his cousin, Papa Ndiaye, at East 179^th Street and Prospect Ave. The temperature hovered in the merciless 90s as Ndiaye, a 6-foot Senegalese immigrant, dressed in a green and yellow shirt over a white tank top and wearing denim shorts, reached his cousin’s office. Wearing his navy and white Yankee cap, Ndiaye, 47, had a favor to ask of his cousin. There were four days left before the start of Ramadan – the ninth and holiest month of the Islamic calendar when Muslims observe a month of fasting and abstinence. Ndiaye – a devout Muslim – sent money to his family in Senegal every month, and needed to send extra cash so they could afford the feasts of Ramadan. The income from driving a part-time livery cab wasn’t nearly enough and Ndiaye asked Papa, also a cab driver, for some money. In an interview in December 2012, Papa said that he apologetically offered Ndiaye his empty hands. “I have my own family,” Papa told him.

The scene of Ahamadou Ndiaye’s death (Bronx District Attorney’s Office | The Uptown Chronicle)

He then told his cousin – whose nickname was Nabo – to get to work and make money. Ahamadou Ndiaye left Papa’s office to spend the night driving the livery cab. Ramadan began on August 21, but the extra money never reached Ahamadou’s family members in Senegal.  Instead, they received his dead body.

***

In 1988, Ahamadou Ndiaye left Senegal to come to the U.S. His family business had failed and the 26-year-old needed to support his father, brother, sister, his wife and two children. His mother had died when he was a baby. In New York City, Ndiaye started peddling bags, sunglasses, gloves and scarves on the streets in Lower Manhattan. After two years, he started driving a taxi. “He was a quiet, religious man,” said Babacar Ba, Ndiaye’s friend and fellow cab driver, in a telephone interview in December, 2012. “He never went to parties. He finished work and went home.”

But the quiet, hard-working taxi driver, who had devotedly studied the Quran, also had a sense of humor, said Papa in an interview at his home on the Grand Concourse in the Bronx.  Ahamadou was “a funny guy,” said Papa who enjoyed his cousin’s monthly visits to his house. “If you sit with him, you had to laugh.” Ahamadou liked living in America because he could earn enough to support his family back home. But he didn’t like driving a cab. “There are a lot of problems with police and customers yelling,” said Ba. “He was looking for any other job like working in a store.” But on the night of August 16, 2009, he was still driving, looking for customers, and trying to earn that extra cash in time for Ramadan. Then someone flagged him down in the Bronx.

***

A little after midnight on August 17, Dennis Roderick Harding, 33, was driving his Silver Nissan Sentra to his girlfriend’s house on Boston Road in the Bronx.  A big bumper sticker at the back of the car declared “Auto Body Work by the Great One Dennis…” According to Harding’s testimony in January 2012, he stopped the car at a red light at the intersection of Boston Road and Wilson Avenue. Suddenly, he heard a sound which he described to the court as “erk-erk.” Harding, an automobile body repair worker, instinctively knew it was the sound of brakes. In less than a few seconds, at 12:30 a.m., a large black Lincoln screeched past his car, hitting one of his lights, the grill and the bumper. It skidded wildly to a halt after slamming the Sentra. Harding testified that he saw someone in a gray hoodie and blue jeans get out of the passenger side from the car’s rear door. But he didn’t see where the solitary figure disappeared to in the darkness. He was trying to look at the person driving the cab to see if he was “going to hit my car and leave,” said Harding. He need not have worried; Harding had not heard a gunshot over the piercing sound of the brakes.  Ahamadou Ndiaye, the driver of the cab, could not have left the scene. A lone bullet had pierced his heart.

Harding, unhurt, called 911 to report the accident and stayed in his car until police from the 47^th Precinct arrived. Officers John McGivney and Johanny Reyes had received a call from the dispatcher about a car accident. When McGivney reached the intersection, he went to the driver of the Lincoln who was slumped backward on the white leather seat. In his testimony, McGivney said, “I grabbed his chest and felt for a pulse to see if he would wake up. I noticed a little bit of blood on his chest.” His Yankee cap lay on the floorboard of the passenger side. But Ndiaye was unresponsive. Emergency Medical Services pulled him out of the vehicle and transported him to Jacobi Medical Center. At 1:20 a.m. on August 17, 2009, Ndiaye was pronounced dead.

Ahamadou Nidaye with his ex-wife Sokhna Tall (Photo courtesy Papa Ndiaye | The Uptown Chronicle)

Papa was asleep in bed with his wife when he received a call from Ahamadou’s taxi company late at night informing him about his cousin’s death. The call took Papa back to 1991, the year he said his younger brother was shot dead while driving a taxi in the Bronx. He said, “Bad people shoot my brother. Bad people shoot Nabo. My mind is saying the same thing happened.” His brother was about the same age as Ndiaye when he was killed. The next day, Papa was called to identify his cousin’s body at the hospital. Aliu Ndiaye, Ahamadou’s half-brother, accompanied Papa. When the white cloth covering the corpse was removed, Aliu started to cry. Papa looked at the lifeless body of the cousin he had known for more than 20 years. “I felt very, very bad, because Nabo is close to me, like a brother,” said Papa. “Nabo is dead. Life is nothing.”

Autopsy records showed that Ahamadou died from a single gunshot wound that had entered through his upper right back, went through his chest cavity, traveled through his heart and finally lodged itself in the muscles on the left side of his chest. Dr. James Gill, the Deputy Chief Medical Examiner in Bronx County, recovered the copper-jacketed small-caliber bullet, which he inscribed with the letter N for Ndiaye, and submitted to ballistics.

In his testimony, McGiveney said he had noticed shell casings on the left floor of the driver’s seat. According to court transcripts, detectives said the cartridge casing was from a bullet fired by a .25 Bauer semi-automatic pistol. According to testimony by detectives from the crime scene unit, they recovered one print on the inside of the Lincoln’s rear glass window. It was a whole palm print. A few days after the murder, more prints from the seventh and ninth fingers and the left palm were identified as belonging to a Charles McDowell.

***

In the summer of 2009, Charles McDowell was living with his mother, Shirley Vaughn, in a well-maintained, modest two-story red-brick house on East 217^th Street in Williamsbridge. Like most other streets in this working-class community in the Bronx, East 217^th Street is lined with rows of moderately-priced one- and two-family houses; some are welcoming with fresh paint and well-manicured grassy knolls, others are decrepit with broken windows and squirrels feasting on trash strewn over their front porches. The seemingly placid façade of Williamsbridge belies the violence that has marred the area for years. According to NYPD statistics, there were 40 complaints in the 47^th Precinct, including 10 robberies and 12 felony assaults, within a single week in December 2012.

***

Raj Singh, a manager at a tiny grocery store right across from where Ndiaye was killed in his cab, said, “It’s safe and it’s not safe. It’s safe for us because there haven’t been any robberies at our shop. But there are always guys selling drugs on the street corners.” Singh said she couldn’t recall the murder, but she said crime is commonplace and the incident was one in several. “I remember there was a shooting here very recently,” said Singh.
McDowell began his life as a criminal at an early age, according to court documents. He was first arrested for robbery at the age of 15 in 2002. Being a youthful offender, he received five-year’s probation. Twelve days after his first arrest, McDowell was detained for stealing a car and let off once again. Crime seemed to be a compulsion for the young man. A year later, he was arrested for selling drugs near a school and spent close to four years in juvenile detention, according to his criminal record. Almost as soon as he was released, he was arrested for criminal possession of narcotics in January 2007 and he spent nearly two more years in prison.

In the summer of 2009, McDowell was a slim, 5-foot-7-inch, 22 year-old man with tattoos on his right and left forearms that read “RIP Lamont.” He was also unemployed, on parole, and enrolled in a drug rehabilitation program.

On August 17 2009, Detective Peter Mooney of the 47^th Precinct Detective Squad, and Detective Luke Waters of the Bronx Homicide department were notified that the prints retrieved from the taxi in which Ahamadou Ndiaye was killed, belonged to Charles McDowell. Efforts to find him began. On August 25, Waters, accompanied by detectives from the homicide squad and the 47^th Precinct, knocked on the door of McDowell’s home. According to Waters’s testimony, a woman – who he presumed was McDowell’s mother – opened the door. When McDowell came to the door, Waters asked him to accompany them back to the station to be questioned about an incident on Boston Road. McDowell asked them for a minute to get ready and then accompanied them to the 47^th Precinct where he was taken to interview room 1 for questioning by Detectives Mooney and Waters.

In a signed statement given to the detectives, McDowell said, “I saw on the news a few days ago that a cab driver got shot on Boston road. I just flicked the channel after that. I haven’t heard anything since or spoke to anyone.” According to the statement, McDowell said he was on parole and had a curfew of 9 p.m. to 7 a.m. He said he had been in his house all day. He gave the detectives consent to search his room. After failing to find anything suspicious, the detectives let McDowell go at 6 p.m. Ndiaye’s killer was still at large.

***

Kissy Zuniga, 21, came to the US from Honduras when she was six. According to her testimony, she dropped out of school at 17 when her mother got sick and died. Her aunt kicked her out of the house. In the summer of 2009, Zuniga met Brandon Johnson, a 22-year-old from the Bronx with a head of cornrows. He became her boyfriend, and her pimp.

A few days after the homicide on Boston Road, Zuniga testified that she was at Johnson’s house, discussing the death of the cab driver. She said that Johnson then pulled out a small, silver gun from his closet and showed it to Kissy, after which they left to visit Johnson’s friend whom he referred to as Tuffy. Tuffy was a nickname for McDowell, who also was Johnson’s friend and neighbor. Zuniga testified that Johnson and McDowell started talking about the homicide. Zuniga said she heard McDowell telling Johnson that he was sitting behind the cab driver who kept pressing on the brakes and even after McDowell ordered him to stop, the driver refused. So McDowell, who was trying to rob Ndiaye, shot him.

***

Charles McDowell was sentenced to life in prison for Ahamadou Ndiaye’s death (Bronx District Attorney’s Office | The Uptown Chronicle)

Two weeks after the homicide, Zuniga was at the home of one of Johnson’s friends. She was getting dressed to meet a client on East 241^st Street in the Wakefield section of the Bronx. Johnson walked into the living room with McDowell, according to Zuniga’s testimony. “Tuffy started playing with that small silver gun,” she said. “He was laughing as he was playing with the gun.” Johnson chided him and told him to put it away but McDowell clicked the gun repeatedly. The three of them then took a cab to East 241^st Street where Zuniga and Johnson left McDowell.

At around the time Zuniga was getting dressed, Shane Panchoo, 25, decided to go to a corner store nearby to get a drink. It was Sunday night, and Panchoo, an auto body repair worker, was enjoying a quiet dinner and movies with his wife and four children at his apartment on East 242^nd Street in the Bronx. Panchoo testified that he left his house at around 11:45 p.m. He wore his black and silver watch and gold bracelet and carried his Motorola Nextel 1576 cellphone along with $5.

The streets were empty but as Panchoo crossed Richardson Avenue in his pajamas, he spotted a “chubby guy and a slim guy.” After buying a $2 soda and chatting with a few friends at the store, he started to walk back home. He noticed the two men he had seen earlier waiting on the sidewalk outside his building. As he walked into the building and toward his door, Panchoo said he saw the chubby man, who was dressed in a white T-shirt and had coarsely cropped hair, bend down. The slim man, wearing a black T-shirt and black pants who was later identified as McDowell, stood by and stared at Panchoo. As Panchoo put his key in the door, he heard a click and turned around. A small, silver gun was pointed a foot and a half away from his face. The chubby man, holding the gun, told Panchoo “give me all that you have.” McDowell stood near the entrance of the building. In his testimony, Panchoo recalled how the man with the gun kept telling him to hurry up.

“I got really nervous because my bracelet wasn’t coming off and the slim guy was telling the chubby guy ‘shoot him, shoot him, he’s taking too long,’” said Panchoo. “I was shooken up.” The bracelet finally came off and the two men ran off towards White Plains Road with Panchoo’s bracelet, watch and cell phone. As soon as Panchoo reached home and told his wife what had happened, she called 911.

After Zuniga finished having sex with her client, Johnson picked her up in a cab. He tried to call McDowell to see where he was but couldn’t reach him at first, according to Zuniga’s testimony. Suddenly, McDowell appeared of nowhere, while the chubby man, later identified as 24-year-old Clemente Williams, also ran toward Zuniga. She said both of them squeezed into the back of the cab with Zuniga in the middle. Police were behind them and McDowell yelled at the cab driver to “go” and told the others to duck down. Police stopped the car and handcuffed all of its occupants including McDowell and Williams. Panchoo later identified them as his assailants.

When McDowell was brought in handcuffs to the 47^th Precinct, police officer Shaun Marks, who was holding him by the shoulder, noticed that McDowell kept leaning to the right side. Even after Marks pulled him back straight, McDowell continued to lean to the right. In his testimony, Marks said, “I kind of looked at him kind of funny. Then I asked him to take his shoes off.” When Marks looked inside McDowell’s left black sneaker, there was a tiny, silver gun hidden inside it.

That night, Detective Luke Waters got a call that Charles McDowell had been arrested for armed robbery. A .25 caliber handgun had been taken from him. Waters walked to the interview room where McDowell was cuffed. Just as Waters sat down to question him, McDowell told him, “You only got a gun on me and I want an attorney.” The detectives could no longer question him. He was put in a cell in the squad room while the detectives sat at their desks. Each time Waters passed by the cell, McDowell came close to the bars and said, “I want to talk to you now, that was an accident.”

Despite being told that the detectives would not be able to take a statement from him, McDowell spoke to them openly. According to the testimony of Michael Mulroy, another detective at the 47^th Precinct, McDowell said, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean this to happen. I will waive my attorney. I didn’t mean to kill the guy.” He repeated it over and over again until the precinct’s commander came out of his room and said, “Look could you just tell him to shut up. No one can do their paperwork.” Mulroy said, “He was scared I guess. He kept persisting it was an accident and he didn’t mean to do it. He kept going over and over about the incident.”

A few days later, the cartridge casing of the .25 caliber handgun recovered from McDowell matched the shell casing of the bullet that had lodged itself in Ahamadou Ndiaye’s chest, according to court transcripts. The bullet that killed the taxi driver was fired from the .25 caliber firearm that was found in McDowell’s left sneaker.

***

Back in the cell of the detectives’ squad room where McDowell was held on the night of his arrest, he rambled on, according to police: “I want to make a statement. I want to talk to the D.A. It’s not fair. It was an accident. I didn’t mean to kill him. How much time will I get for this? What do I have to do to be able to give a statement?  Could I get 15 years for this? I would take 15 years.”
McDowell didn’t get 15 years. He got life imprisonment. On February 27, 2012, a Bronx Supreme Court jury found him guilty of one count of murder in the second degree and one count of robbery in the first degree. On March 9, 2012, Acting State Supreme Court Justice Martin Marcus sentenced the 25-year-old to consecutive terms of 25 years to life for the murder of Ahamadou Ndiaye, and 15 years for robbing Shane Panchoo.

Papa Ndiaye feels that he has lost his brother (Photo by Tasneem Nashrulla | The Uptown Chronicle)

McDowell, who is serving his sentence at the Five Points Correctional Facility in Romulus, NY, is eligible for parole only after serving a minimum of 40 years in prison. His case is on appeal. In a letter sent from prison in December 2012, McDowell expressed caution about commenting on his case. He wrote: “It’s easy for them to incarcerate you and extremely hard to get out. I have been handed down a lot of times and would need all the help I can get to successfully execut (sic) my appeal.”

In an interview in December, Bronx assistant district attorney Paul Rosenfeld, who prosecuted the case, said he believed McDowell deserved life imprisonment because he had committed murder with intent to kill. “The defense’s case was that McDowell’s gun might have accidentally gone off when the taxi lurched forward,” said Rosenfeld. “But the fact is that he was carrying a loaded gun and that he used it to shoot and kill someone.”

***

McDowell’s lawyer, Eliot Kaplan, refused to discuss his client’s case. McDowell’s mother, Shirley Vaughn, also refused to comment. She said, “I have already lost one son. I don’t want to talk about the other one.”
With the death of their sole breadwinner, Ahamadou Ndiaye’s family is struggling financially in Senegal. They are planning to send Ndiaye’s 22-year-old son to America to support the family.  Papa Ndiaye said he collected more than $7,000 from his local mosque, Ndiaye’s friends and peers and New York-based Senegalese associations to pay for his cousin’s funeral and to “take Nabo home” to be buried in his native land.
Although Papa feels he has lost another brother, he doesn’t hold any hatred for McDowell. “American people: some are good, some are bad. I’m not going to get a gun and shoot him,” said Papa. He said his trust in God as a Muslim equipped him to handle everything and feel nothing towards McDowell. After all, he said, “Everybody gonna die.”

]]> http://theuptownchronicle.com/?feed=rss2&p=5565 1 http://theuptownchronicle.com/?p=5552 http://theuptownchronicle.com/?p=5552#comments Tue, 05 Feb 2013 19:56:57 +0000 Katherine Jacobsen http://theuptownchronicle.com/?p=5552 An argument over a cell phone led to Miguel Colon’s death

As a sunny Sunday afternoon slowly faded into evening in the northwest Bronx on July 12, 2009, Tamika Jennings and Mark St. Pierre walked out of the Chuck E Cheese restaurant on East Gun Hill Road, fighting about a cell phone. The estranged couple had started the afternoon celebrating the third birthday of their daughter Jada at the restaurant and were headed their separate ways when St. Pierre’s temper began to flare.

The 6-foot, approximately 200-pound St. Pierre began to raise his voice and pushed Jennings’s back against the front end of a nearby car, hands clamped around her neck, according to court documents.  Jennings’s sunglass lenses were shattered in the altercation, though Jennings came out unscathed, if not annoyed at St. Pierre for making a scene.

The scene of Miguel Colon’s death (Bronx District Attorney’s Office | The Uptown Chronicle)

After St. Pierre, then 35, let go of Jennings, he grabbed Jada from her grandmother’s car from which Jada had watched the argument along with Jennings’s other daughter, mother, sister and nephew.

Bystanders in the restaurant parking lot got involved in the altercation forcing St. Pierre to return Jada to her mother.  Jennings’s mother then drove her car from the restaurant, turning right and continuing along East Gun Hill Road for about ten blocks before stopping at a red light on Knapp Street.  As the car braked to a stop, Jennings saw a dark blur swoop past, followed by a thud.  ”I assumed it was Mark,” she would later testify.

Frances Rue was sitting in his Cadillac in the lane next to Jennings stopped at the same red light on Knapp Street watching a father and son cross the road. The father, Rue remembered, was carrying a red, child-sized bicycle.  ”Before I knew it, all I heard was this loud bang,” Rue said in an interview in December 2012.  ”Next thing I know, I saw the bike explode,” he said, adding that the father flew off the hood of the dark-colored sedan and hit a telephone pole before falling lifelessly below a parked SUV nearby.

Rue, a sports coach, said he remembered the sound of the man’s head hitting the telephone pole was like that of a ball hitting a baseball bat.  The impact was so hard that the man’s sneakers were knocked off, according to police reports.

In an instant, Miguel Colon, 37, who was walking his six-year-old son, Sebastian, to the subway, was killed at approximately 5:45 p.m.

Mark St. Pierre was convicted in Miguel Colon’s death (NYPD | The Uptown Chronicle)

According to court documents, Colon was tossed 72-feet. Six-year-old Sebastian Colon stood on the curb without a scratch.   More than 38 9-1-1 phone calls were made, reporting the accident.  Meanwhile, Mark St. Pierre sped on in his car for nearly a mile.

After he saw the accident, Rue remembered running from his Cadillac to Sebastian.  On his way, Rue caught a glimpse of Colon’s lifeless eyes, lids still open.

As he shifted his gaze to Sebastian’s face, Rue watched as the boy slowly realized that his father was not going to wake up.  ”I said, ‘Your daddy is in heaven now,’ and I think that is when Sebastian knew,” Rue said, the folds under his eyes collecting tears, his words coming out in a hoarse whisper as he recounted what had happened.

A crowd gathered around the scene of the accident and well-intentioned onlookers rushed forward to help.  Rue took Sebastian back to his car to keep him safe from the crowd.  ”He was in shock,” Rue said of the six-year-old.  ”I just realized anybody else touches him, they gonna mess him all up.”

In his Cadillac, Rue, who was 65 at the time of the accident, asked Sebastian for his mother’s telephone number.  He dialed and told a stranger that her son’s father had been killed.

“Is my baby all right?,” Rue remembers Sebastian’s mother, Kathy Salas, screaming into the phone with a pleading air of desperation.   Rue reassured her that Sebastian was safe.  In a half-hour, Salas had made it to the scene, running down East Gun Hill Road to find her son, Rue remembered.

During that time, the police and firefighters cordoned off a crime scene right in front of the Eastchester Public Library and placed a sheet over Colon’s lifeless figure.  Rue accompanied Sebastian and his mother to the EMS vehicle nearby, and when it was time, several minutes later, they parted ways.   ”Kathy told me I was his guardian angel and thanked me,” said Rue, during an interview in December in the Royal Coach Cafe on East Gun Hill Road, his eyes staring off into the distance, before shaking his head as if to bring himself back to the present.

Rue said after he said goodbye to the mother and child, he then filed a police report at 6:40 p.m., and took a detour off of East Gun Hill Road to get back home; his usual route had been blocked by the massive trail of wreckage St. Pierre had created.

Rue also said that when he got home, he drank a six-pack of beer to try and dull what he had just seen.  That evening, or perhaps the next day, he called Kathy Salas to check on Sebastian.

***

As Rue had rushed to Sebastian, Winston Shakespeare, who was stopped behind Jennings and Rue at the light, saw the accident, and then took off after St. Pierre’s 2008 Infiniti, which was traveling around 90 mph, headed west, according to court documents.

After he hit Colon, St. Pierre just “lost it,” said Lawrence Piergrossi, the Bronx Assistant District Attorney, in a December 2012 interview.  ”I think it became about something other than him trying to find Tamika….  He realized he hit the other guy and he was trying to kill himself.”

Miguel Colon (right) with his brother Charles Cruz (Photo courtesy Charles Cruz | The Uptown Chronicle)

Shakespeare followed St. Pierre, who seemed to be playing a high-stakes game of bumper cars with oncoming traffic, according to court documents.

St. Pierre hit Timothy McNish’s green Nissan Pathfinder in the east-bound lane, then he swung back to the west-bound lane and collided with Jonathan Diaz’s gray Honda Accord, which had his two nieces and nephew inside.  St. Pierre then hit Oliver Williams’s white Cadillac in the east-bound lane, with Jennifer Cipolla in the passenger’s seat, before making his final contact with Denzel Davis and his two passengers in their Ford sedan, according to court documents.

St. Pierre’s car finally stopped at the intersection of Laconia Avenue and East Gun Hill Road.  St. Pierre wiggled free from the deployed airbags in his car, sliding out of his totaled, blood-stained car and hobbled around the intersection, according to Shakespeare’s court testimony.

As St. Pierre’s high-speed rampage ended, police started to arrive along the stretch of East Gun Hill Road, piecing together information from the 9-1-1 telephone calls and the wreckage before them, Winston Shakespeare would testify.  St. Pierre’s car, Shakespeare said, looked “like a crushed up soda can.”

After a few moments of struggle, during which St. Pierre is reported to have said, “Kill me, kill me” to police officers, he was taken into custody.  He was then taken for medical treatment at Jacobi Hospital, followed by treatment at Bellevue Hospital downtown because authorities worried that St. Pierre might take his own life.

***

Miguel Colon had always been close to Charles Cruz, his younger half-brother, growing up in the Belmont region of the Bronx.  Colon and Cruz have different fathers, but Cruz’s father, Rafael Soto, raised Colon as his own son.  Colon’s father disappeared shortly after his birth, said Cruz.

Frances Rue still lives with the image of Colon’s death (Photo by Katherine Jacobsen | The Uptown Chronicle)

Soto, who was a drug dealer in the mid-1970s and early 1980s, wanted to make sure that his children’s future would be better than his past and sent Colon to live with his godparents in Mount Vernon where he attended a private high school.  Despite the distance, Cruz remembered that his big brother came home nearly every weekend to spend time with him.  Family above all, is what Colon used to say, Cruz remembered during an interview in December 2012.

As he grew older, Colon became the defacto head of his large, close-knit family.  The brothers were two of seven children, with eleven aunts and uncles on their mother’s side, but everyone seemed to look up to Miguel, Cruz said.

Cruz and Colon remained each other’s closest friends.  Cruz was there for the births of both of his brother’s two children: Miguel Jr. in 1998, and Sebastian in 2003.  Cruz remembers sneaking in to see his nephews, pretending to be his brother.  When Cruz’s first son, Noah, now four, was born in 2008, Colon did the same thing, unable to contain his excitement about his nephew.

On Friday, July 9, 2009, Cruz and his wife, Ingris, found out that they were expecting their second child, Cruz said.  But even though Colon came over that weekend, the couple decided to wait before telling him– it was still too early on in the pregnancy, and that weekend was not the right time.  Colon had recently gotten into a spat with several of his aunts and life had not returned to normal after he was in a car accident in April.

Colon and his 19-year-old girlfriend, Nicole Caraballo, and four of her friends were involved in the accident while driving back from City Island late at night.  A car swerved in front of their vehicle and Caraballo’s friend lost control.  The car swerved and flipped over just short of the Fordham Road exit off of Pelham Parkway, Cruz remembered.  Colon, who was sitting with Caraballo in his lap, was the only one of the six passengers in the car who was seriously hurt Cruz said.

Cruz remembered getting a phone call from his brother at three in the morning, when Miguel was taken to Jacobi Hospital in the Bronx.  Colon told his brother that he was fine, that he was just going for a checkup.  The two said goodbye, and Colon promised to call if things got serious, which they did.  The car accident left several discs along his neck out of line, and he had to have surgery to repair the damage.

When he found out, Cruz rushed to the hospital.  He found Nicole at his brother’s side.  The two announced their engagement and discussed details of Colon’s impending surgery, shocking Cruz.

Colon and his fiancée had met while he was working as the assistant manager of a T-Mobile store on Pelham Parkway.  They had a quick, if not rushed, courtship, according to Cruz.  Cruz accepted his older brother’s girlfriend with trepidation, but remembered being taken aback when Colon called to tell his brother that the two had just gone to the courthouse to be married.  Caraballo declined to comment for the story.

On the weekend of July 9, Colon was still wearing a brace to keep his neck in place.  There was a family reunion that weekend, and Cruz had called his older brother, encouraging him to go, but Colon wanted his space, still annoyed that several of his aunts had not called after his risky spinal surgery to see how he was doing.  But Cruz said he encouraged Colon to bring his children to the reunion, and Colon obliged.

Both Miguel Jr. and Sebastian live with their mothers– they were not married to Colon– but Colon always made an effort to see his sons on the weekend.

On Sunday July 12th, at the end of Colon’s weekend with Sebastian, Colon walked his son to the No. 2-train subway stop on East Gun Hill Road to take him back to his mother’s house.  Then, Cruz said, his brother was supposed to meet him.

Instead of getting a call from Miguel to say that he was going to be late, Salas’s number flashed on Cruz’s caller ID.  Miguel, she said, was dead.

Assistant District Attorney Lawrence Piergrossi prosecuted the case (Photo by Katherine Jacobsen | The Uptown Chronicle)

“I didn’t believe it,” said Cruz.  ”To me, my brother was superman.”  His next reaction, was that he had to see it for himself– he had to know if Miguel was alive, Cruz said.  Cruz and his cousin argued over which one of them was more fit to drive, before Cruz ended up with the keys.

When they got to the scene, it was total chaos.  Cruz got out of the car, he said, and sprinted to officers who surrounded his brother’s body.  “They were like, ‘How do you know it is him?,’” the police asked Cruz.  Cruz remembered responding incredulously.

Only after Cruz calmed down and saw his brother’s limp body did he begin to process what had happened and tried to figure out how he would tell his mother.

Unable to drive, and in desperate need of fresh air, Cruz walked three and a half miles from the crime scene to his mother’s home.  When Cruz walked into his mother’s apartment at 179th Street between Arthur and Hughes Avenues in the Bronx, she saw her son’s face, and her first question was “Who died?” Cruz said.

“I don’t want to tell you,” he answered.

“You can tell me,” she said.

“It was Mike,” Cruz said, using Miguel’s nickname.  Their mother thought it was a bad joke at first, said Cruz.  Colon had just survived a car accident, surely he would not be in another so soon afterwards.  Cruz assured his mother, who died in 2011, that he was serious.

She was the first in a long line of relatives that Cruz would tell about his brother’s passing.  In an afternoon, Cruz had become the family’s new leader.

***

The next day, Cruz had to tell Miguel Jr., who was 11 at the time, that his father had died.

A day later, Cruz drove up to Riverdale to see his oldest nephew, who lived with his mother, Lourdes Roman.  Miguel Jr. was expecting to play basketball with his father that week.

When Cruz walked into the living room his nephew was watching a television report about a reckless driver on East Gun Hill Road.  He asked Miguel Jr. to turn the television off.  Cruz then told his nephew that his father, Miguel Colon, was the victim of the man on the news.

Colon’s funeral was held on July 16, 2009, four days after his death.  According to his brother, more than 200 family members and friends attended to celebrate Colon’s life, and mourn his death.

Frances Rue remembered attending and seeing more than several men he used to coach in various sports.  They were used to Rue on the field or court where he was a stern disciplinarian.  At the funeral, he hugged and mourned.  Rue said that every summer he tries to take Sebastian and his brother out to at least one sporting event; they are baseball fans like their father, Rue said.

Rue still has the paper from the day that Miguel died, along with a candle he removed from the small memorial set up for Colon at the site of the accident.  They are reminders, he said, of what happened that day.

***

On July 17, 2012, three years and one day after Colon’s funeral, Mark St. Pierre pled guilty to one count of manslaughter in the second degree.  He will serve a minimum of approximately ten years, and he will be eligible for parole in June 2018.

During his sentencing, St. Pierre apologized for his actions and expressed his remorse.

Throughout his trial, the only family member with whom St. Pierre was in contact was a sister, said the defense attorney, Karen Charrington,.  His sister could not be reached for comment.

St. Pierre’s brother, Brian St. Pierre, who now lives in Missouri, said in a phone interview that he found out from his aunt that Mark had been involved in an accident.  The brothers have not spoken for several years, though Brian St. Pierre said that he plans to write Mark soon.

Brian St. Pierre also extended his apologies to those that suffered from his brother’s actions, which, he said, were not characteristic at all.  ”I believe my brother just simply snapped,” Brian St. Pierre said of Mark.  ”I understand that he was having stress from work.”

Mark St. Pierre was working at a P.C. Richards Store, according to both the prosecutor and defense attorney.

Charrington said in a telephone interview in December that the plea bargain seemed like the best option for St. Pierre.  It would have been difficult to establish the basis for an insanity plea, she said.  Charrington did mention, however, that  “Tamika may have influenced his state of mind,” referring to St. Pierre’s estranged girlfriend.

***

Almost three years after Miguel Colon was killed, Charles Cruz sat for an interview about his brother in a diner on 90th and Amsterdam Ave. in Manhattan.  Cruz had just dropped off Noah, now four years old, at pre-kindergarten nearby, and was wearing a black screen-print t-shirt with a superhero on it.

Noah can recognize pictures of his Uncle Mike, Cruz said proudly.  Cruz also said that he pops in a copy of the Lion King to explain his brother’s death to his young sons so that they understand that Uncle Mike is gone forever, but is with them eternally.

Cruz still sees his brother’s two sons, Miguel Jr. and Sebastian on a regular basis, he said.

“My brother held my hand to cross the street until I was about 14 years old,” said Cruz, a smile on his face.  My brother was my keeper, he continued, and now Cruz is the keeper of his brother’s memory.

Glenn Terrell Sr. and Glenn Terrell Jr. circa 1986 (Courtesy Terrell family)

Glenn Terrell Sr., 53, sat on a black leather couch in his South Bronx apartment as he went through a large box of old family photos. On the wall above where he sat, there was a framed photograph of him and the rest of his army colleagues at Fort Benning, Georgia, 1977. “That was a long time ago,” he said, glancing up at the picture.

It was a Monday evening in mid-December, 2012. The light from the lamp on the nearby side table revealed gray stubble on his face and a gold chain around his neck. On a nearby couch, his wife Charlene watched “Politics Nation” on MSNBC, and something sizzled loudly in the kitchen behind him.

He wore a black sleeveless shirt that revealed several tattoos on his arms: one of a black panther, and one, a portrait of his late father, that said, “I love Dad.” On the inside of his right forearm, another tattoo read “GLEN R.I.P.” for his son who was murdered five years earlier.

He was somber as he discussed his son’s death. At times, he would choke up and become quiet. But once, after a brief pause, he leaned forward. His voice was stern and grew noticeably louder:

“A lot of people are going to fucking die for what happened to my son.”

***

Years earlier, on January 20, 2008, Glenn Terrell Jr., 27 years old at the time, went to The Crystal

Lounge at 1035 Prospect Ave. in the Morrisania section of the South Bronx. He was with his friend Julian “Jabar” Kemp, and they were celebrating Kemp’s birthday, according to Glenn Sr.

Telena Simmons was finishing her bartending shift at the Crystal Lounge. Glenn Jr.—“Dirty,” Simmons called him—had been pursuing her throughout the night, and she was “so excited,” she said in an interview in December. When she stepped out of the bar to have a cigarette around 4 a.m., he went with her.

According to Simmons, William Gay, 24 at the time, approached the outside of the bar. Simmons recognized him because the two had shared an intimate night a few weeks earlier at a house near the Forest/McKinley projects. She said that she did not know Gay well, but greeted him with a quick kiss, prompting Terrell to say to her, “You’re coming home with me tonight.”

According to court documents, “Gay responded by shooting Terrell in the back of his head with a 9 mm semiautomatic handgun.”

No one reported seeing Gay pull the trigger.

***

Glenn Terrell Jr. circa 2006 (Courtesy Terrell family)

Glenn Sr. was awakened by loud banging on his door. It was Julian Kemp’s mother, Linda Kemp, who lived upstairs in Glenn Sr.’s building in Morrisania. She was crying, Glenn Sr. recalled in a phone interview.

When Linda told him that his son—“Glenny,” he called him—had been shot, he rushed to the bar, which was just a few blocks from where he lived on 169^th Street. Glenn Sr. recalled arriving at the scene. He said that he saw his son on the ground, “brains out, eye out…”

His voice went high, then broke.

Shameka Terrell, Glenn Jr.’s younger sister by one year, was sleeping when her phone rang in the middle of the night. It was her cousin saying, “Hurry up, you gotta get to the hospital,” she said. Shameka rushed to Lincoln Hospital in her pajamas.

When she got there, her brother was brain dead and on life support. His body and head were extremely swollen, she said.

Glenn Sr. wanted to take his son off life support, but decided to wait for Glenn Jr.’s mother, Renee Terrell, to get there. When Renee arrived, she was frantic and pleaded with the doctors to keep trying everything they could, Glenn Sr. said.

“I tried to calm her down and explain to her…there is nothing else they can do for him,” he said in the phone interview, his voice breaking again.

In the afternoon of January 21, Glenn Sr. and Renee—who were divorced at the time, but had previously been married for 26 years—said prayers at their son’s bedside. Glenn Sr. remembered saying to his son, “I’m sorry you had to go this way, and daddy loves you.”

Glenn Jr. was taken off the machine.

Renee went to her son’s apartment, sat on his bed, drank a bottle of Hennessy, and cried. “I asked God to give me the strength,” she said in a phone interview.

***

William Gay’s mugshot photo

Around the same time, Detective Raymond Rosado of the 42^nd precinct was bringing everyone who was at The Crystal Lounge in for questioning. He interviewed Telena Simmons in the early hours of January 20.

She told him she did not see who shot Glenn Jr., but she described the person he had an altercation with just before the shot: black, about 5’10”, and 180 lbs. She only knew Gay as “Boo” and did not know his real name, but because she knew Gay to be associated with the Forest and McKinley projects, Rosado showed her a book of photos of individuals from that “turf” with criminal records.

She identified Gay.

Debra Davis, the security guard at The Crystal Lounge—Rosado called her a “thug” and “no joke”—also identified Gay in the photos, according to court records.

Andrew Brown, who was homeless and selling a DVD to someone in the bar, was standing outside when Glenn Jr. was shot. But according to court documents, Brown did not want to pick a person out from the book because he thought that people could look different in photographs.

Detective Daniel Rivera of the Bronx Violent Felony Squad later testified that he went to Gay’s home at 1240 Washington Ave. multiple times from January 24 to January 29 in 2008 to make an arrest. Rivera testified that Gay, who lived with his mother, Tina, was not there even though he was on parole for a drug charge and had an obligation to be home after curfew. In a phone interview, Rivera said that he contacted Gay’s sister, who said that her brother was sick in the hospital. Rivera said that he did not find Gay at the hospital or in hospital records.

In an interview, Tina said, “They lied…they never came to my home.” She said that the police claimed that they spoke to a superintendent. But Tina, who is the president of the tenant’s association of the building, said the building did not have a superintendent at the time.

***

 On January 26, Glenn Terrell Sr. buried his oldest son.

Glenn Jr. also had a son named Glenn, who was six years old at the time.

Glenn Terrell Jr.’s son, “Little Glenn” in 2009 (Courtesy Terrell family)

Ikeya Akins is Glenn Jr.’s ex-girlfriend and the mother of “Little Glenn,” who is now 10. She described in a phone interview the conversation she had with her son about his father’s death. She said that he asked her, “Am I ever going to see him again?” and she replied, “No, because he is in heaven.”

“He didn’t take it too good…he really loved his dad,” she said, and added that sometimes he still cries in his room.

Renee did not go to her son’s funeral. “I couldn’t handle it,” she said in a phone interview, adding that she did not want her last memory of her son to be of him in a casket.

Four days after Glenn Jr.’s funeral, Gay was arrested when he reported for parole on West 31^st Street in Manhattan. The parole officer called Rivera, who arrested Gay and took him to the 42^nd precinct in the Bronx. In a January 2013 phone interview, Rivera said that Gay was “a gentleman” and did not resist arrest.

Gay was held at Rikers for a crime that his family strongly believed he did not commit. He was offered a plea, but did not accept it.

The weapon, a 9 mm semiautomatic pistol, was not recovered until May 26, 2009, when four men were arrested for a murder in Manhattan. According to court documents, microscopic analysis showed that the weapon was the same one that was used in Terrell’s shooting, but there was no connection established between Gay and the other four men.

***

The speedy trial law does not apply to homicide in New York State, and the case took four and a half years to go to court. It originally went to trial in February 2012, but Cesar Gonzalez Jr., Gay’s defense attorney at the time, was removed in the middle of jury selection. He had been representing Gay for about two years, but when it was revealed that he was also representing Lamar Terrell, Glenn Jr.’s brother, in an unrelated homicide case, Gay requested new counsel. Gay was assigned to a new attorney, Edward Dudley.

Proceedings began again in July of 2012 in Bronx Supreme Court before Judge Ann Donnelly.

It was not until Glenn Sr. arrived at the courtroom—four and a half years after his son’s murder—that he realized he knew the father of the man accused of killing his son. Glenn Sr. and William Robertson, Gay’s father, knew each other from childhood.

Glenn Terrell Sr.’s tattoo remembering his dead son (Photo by Laura Dimon | The Uptown Chronicle)

According to Glenn Sr., they shook hands and had a friendly conversation outside of the courtroom. But Glenn Sr. also said that he told Robertson, “You know what I’ll do,” implying that he planned to avenge his son’s death. “We’re from the street,” Glenn Sr. said in an interview. He explained that Robertson understood “the code.”

But Glenn Sr. said that he did not believe that Robertson’s son, William Gay, killed Glenn Jr.

In the courtroom, other connections between the families emerged: Glenn Sr. said that he was working in Tina’s building at the time as a janitor. Shameka Terrell said that she recognized Tina, who lived down the street from her, because she always loved Tina’s hair. Shameka said that her aunt later pointed out that Teedee Gay, William Gay’s sister, also attended Public School 158, where Shameka went.

***

In his opening statement, Prosecutor Joshua Gradinger called the crime “brutal, cold-blooded, and senseless” and said that Gay “blew [Terrell’s] brains out.” He said that the two did not know each other.

Gradinger argued that the exchange between Gay and Simmons made a jealous Glenn Jr. say to Simmons, “You going home with me tonight.” According to Gradinger, Gay retaliated with a bullet. Gay’s absence in the days following the crime, Gradinger argued, was indicative of his “consciousness of guilt.”

Dudley argued that the identification process of Gay as the killer was a result of “faulty” and “unsure” identification processes.

Shameka was one of the first people to testify. She later said in an interview in December 2012, reflecting on the trial, “You’re numb. You’re in disbelief…the pictures that they showed were just horrific.” She said that she was particularly disturbed by a photo of the red hat that her brother was wearing on the night he was shot. It had a bullet hole in it.

Telena Simmons testified on July 10, 2012. In her testimony, she said that she’d had about 15 shots of Hennessy since arriving at work that afternoon and was “very drunk” at the time of the shooting. She said that she only remembered Glenn Jr. falling to the ground and her ear ringing from the shot.

Simmons testified that just before the shot, she was in the vestibule between the bar’s two front doors and facing out to the street. Gay was to her right, and Glenn Jr. was to her left.

Glenn Terrell Jr. with his son, “Little Glenn” in 2005 (Courtesy Terrell family)

She also testified that Glenn Jr. said, “You’re coming home with me” after she and Gay greeted each other and that the shot rang out shortly thereafter.

On July 17, medical examiner Carolyn Kappen testified. She explained that the gun was within extremely close range, if not touching the victim. She said that the bullet entered through back of the head slightly to the right, that the victim’s left eye had been displaced from the socket, and that he died from “phenomenal” head and brain injury.

Dudley said in a phone interview in December that at that point in the trial, “The case changed from just an identification case to…a forensic case.”

Gradinger argued that the bullet hit in the back slightly to the right because Glenn Jr. likely saw Gay pull the gun and turned to run.

Dudley argued that based on their positions and the angle of the bullet, someone must have come up behind the victim. The reason that Simmons did not see it, Dudley argued, was that the vestibule had blocked her view.

On July 17, Debra Davis, the security guard at The Crystal Lounge, testified that she’d had a stroke since the incident and lost much of her memory. But she said that after she heard the shot, she saw Glenn Jr. on the ground through the bar window that overlooked the street, and called 911.

Gradinger and Rosado both said in interviews in December that they believed that Simmons and Davis saw more than they admitted. Shameka said she thought that Simmons got “scared.”

Gradinger desperately wanted to find Andrew Brown, the homeless man who was standing outside of The Crystal Lounge at the time of the shooting. He said that Bronx D.A. detectives, who are mainly retired policemen, had been trying to find Brown for a long time. “I had police officers looking for him in every homeless shelter in North Carolina,” where he believed Brown was, he said.

On July 18, Judge Donnelly told Gradinger that he had one more day to find Brown.

The Crystal Lounge, where the murder took place (Photo from Bronx District Attorney’s office)

According to Gradinger, Brown happened to have returned to New York just before the trial, and the D.A. detectives found him. Gradinger later said in a phone interview that dealing with witnesses is the hardest part of his job. “You can bring the horse to water but you can’t make it drink,” he said. “Sometimes you can’t even find the horse.”

Andrew Brown was the last witness to testify. He took the stand on July 20. He testified that he heard a shot and then saw a black man standing over the body with a dark object in his hand. He said that the shooter looked right at him, with “death” in his eyes, and that the experience was “mind-blowing.”

He identified Gay as the perpetrator. “I never forget that face,” he said.

He recalled that when he looked down at Glenn Jr., Glenn Jr.’s lips were still moving. Brown cried during his testimony.

In court transcripts, Donnelly said that Brown’s testimony was compelling. Gradinger said in an interview in his office months later that Brown was “very powerful.”

Glenn Sr. also reflected on Brown’s testimony: “That was such a shock…who’s this?” He said he did not know there would be another witness. He went on, in a phone conversation, “He was crying! It hurt me so bad, I had to leave the courtroom…I wish I could thank him. Coming forward like that…knowing what could happen to you. That took a lot of heart.”

***

On July 24, after five hours of deliberation, the jury found Gay guilty of murder in the second degree and criminal possession of a weapon in the second degree.

Gay’s older sister, Teedee Gay, said of the verdict, “I was in shock. It was a surreal feeling.” Gay’s father, William Robertson, said that Teedee was hysterical and he had to “damn near carry” her out of the courtroom.

The defense filed a motion to set aside the verdict, but Donnelly denied it. Three months later, on October 31, Gay was sentenced to a maximum of 25 years to life imprisonment on the murder charge and up to 15 years imprisonment on the gun charge. His earliest possible release date is January 25, 2033.

Robertson was not present at his son’s sentencing. “I knew it wasn’t going to be good,” he said in a phone interview.

William Gay and girlfriend Kim Pedroso in 2012 (Courtesy Gay family)

Gay was transferred to Upstate Correctional Facility, a maximum-security state prison in Franklin County, New York.

He is appealing the case.

***

Months later, reflecting on the trial, Gradinger said that even though “circumstantial” is “not a dirty word” in his opinion, it was still a “very challenging case.” He said, “No one saw [Gay] do it. You have a woman who had 13 to 15 shots of Hennessy, and then a homeless person.”

Mamie Terrell, 74, Glenn Jr.’s grandmother, watched the whole trial. She said, “It had been so many years and I was glad when it was over…it was really devastating for the family.”

On the other side, Dudley said in phone interview, “I feel very upset about it… I know in my heart, and I’ve said this for years, [Gay] did not shoot him.” Teedee said in a phone interview that she saw Dudley cry some time after the verdict was read.

“My brother did not get a fair trial,” Teedee said. “Every day, it hurts so much…that my brother is incarcerated for something he didn’t do.”

Gay’s father, William Robertson, said, “They didn’t have any DNA, they didn’t have any witnesses…I never knew [they could find someone guilty] like that.” But he added, “I didn’t have anything against the [Terrells.] We’re in the same situation. They lost a son, I’m losing one.”

On September 17, 2012, Gay wrote a letter to Donnelly. “All I’m asking is that you examine what’s presented and take into consideration to at least give me a fair chance to get my life back…I’m not saying I’m an angel, but I am innocent.” He continued, “Everybody knows I didn’t do this…the father knows I did not kill his son.”

***

On a Saturday afternoon in early December, Gay’s mother reflected on her son’s trial.

Tina, 54, wore pink slippers around her neatly organized South Bronx apartment, which smelled strongly of incense. Her straight grey-white hair, tinted light violet, was pulled back into a tight ponytail. Her nails, which were flawlessly manicured scarlet, looked particularly dramatic when she held a cigarette or tapped it into the ashtray on the kitchen table.

“You have Andrew Perry Brown coming in at the very end of the trial and saying that my son was standing over this dead body with something in his hand…and you saw, looking in his eyes, you saw death,” she said, sarcastically. Tina said she thought it was ridiculous to say that anyone would stand over a body they just shot: “No one in [his] right mind would do that.”

William Gay (Courtesy Gay family)

Tina had several other concerns about the trial. She said that Brown described Gay as wearing a Yankees baseball cap. Tina said that her son neither wore baseball caps nor was a Yankees fan, but one photo showed that Gay did, indeed, wear a baseball cap.

“These people were all in cahoots, all of them,” she said, saying she strongly suspected that Gradinger fed Simmons her testimony. She said that the “You’re coming home with me” exchange was made up. “That never happened,” she said.

“Everybody’s body language was focused on that D.A.,” she said, and added that when Brown finished his testimony and walked out of the court, she saw him gesture a thumbs-up at Glenn Sr.

She continued. “I witness this dead boy’s father say, ‘Hey, Mr. Dudley, how you doing?’” Tina said she realized that Dudley and Glenn Sr. knew each other. She said she felt it was a conflict of interest that was not taken into account. (Glenn Sr. said in a phone interview that he knew Dudley from “20 or 30 years ago…from passing through.” Dudley said that he had defended Glenn Sr.’s cousin Arthur Lawson in a case many years earlier.)

Of Donnelly, Tina said, “I could have punched her in her face.”

“My son is not a killer. He is not a murderer.”

***

 Mamie, Glenn Sr.’s mother, said that she worries about her son. She recalled that at her grandson’s funeral, Glenn Sr. had “one son in handcuffs and one son in a casket.” His third son has since been incarcerated. She said that Glenn Sr. tries to stay strong, but added, “I know inside it’s killing him slowly.”

Glenn Sr.’s mood lightens at the mention of his grandson, “Spanky,” he calls him. He said, shaking his head and smiling, that “Spanky” reminded him of Glenn Jr. at that age. Shameka said, “[My brother] was always dancing, my nephew does the same thing…It’s him, all over again.” Mamie calls her great grandson “Little Glenn.” She said, “He looks just like [Glenn Jr.] If you look at him, you see my grandson’s face.”

Mamie added that she worries about “Little Glenn’s” future. “We don’t know what’s going to happen to him.”

***

On that December evening at his apartment, Glenn Sr. said that he was in the Black Spades gang when he was young. “[Glenn Jr.] wanted to be like me, but in all the wrong ways.”

Mamie said her grandson was “really was not a street kid…but when you live in New York City, you gotta know the street as well as your books.”

Glenn Terrell Sr. and son Glenn Terrell Jr.on his last birthday, 2007 (Courtesy Terrell family)

Shameka and her father both said that they believed Glenn Jr. was involved with the Bloods gang. Shameka said, “After he died, they did tell me that he was a Blood…that was hard for me to imagine.”

Glenn Jr. was planning to disassociate from the gang just before he died, according to Glenn Sr.

That seemed to strike a particular nerve with him.

He said he never understood how six of his son’s friends, including Julian Kemp, who had taken Glenn Jr. to The Crystal Lounge that night, were there at the time of the shooting, and not one saw anything. He slipped in and out of vagueness when asked who he thought killed his son, if not William Gay, and if there had been revenge.

He said that after his son died, “Things just started happening…people started getting shot.”

When asked where Julian Kemp is now, he smiled. “In Virginia,” and added, with a laugh, “hiding out.”

Tina Adovasio
(Photo taken from Facebook | The Uptown Chronicle)

Tina Adovasio always followed procedure in the maternity ward at Sound Shore Hospital in New Rochelle where she was a nurse.  “Is there something you want to tell us?”  Adovasio would ask every patient.  “Have you ever been hit?  Verbally or physically abused?”

If the patient answered yes, Adovasio, according to her work colleagues, would then offer the assistance of a social worker or other hospital resources to help the woman and her newborn child escape the trauma, darkness and seclusion of domestic abuse.

It was a darkness that Adovasio knew all too well, hidden under her sunny persona and eyes that seemed too blue and too beautiful to endure the physical suffering that she was trained to spot.

***

On March 16, 2011, Officer Mark Rapisardo of the Yorktown Police Department in Westchester County received a call to identify a body that his fellow officers thought might have been his cousin.  She was reported missing a few days earlier by her husband, Eddy Coello, a former New York City housing police officer.  Rapisardo drove to the wooded area between the Taconic State Parkway and Baldwin Road.  It was still cold, and the leaves crunched beneath his feet.

When he arrived on the scene, Rapisardo testified that he was escorted into the woods by a sergeant and a detective.  He said he saw his cousin, Adovasio, lying face up in the dirt.  “She was bruised and swollen,” he testified.

Photographs produced as evidence at the trial show Adovasio lying at the bottom of an incline, behind a tree, dressed only in pink underwear, a sports bra and a little t-shirt, half covered in twigs and leaves –- invisible to anyone on the Taconic Parkway.

Photo of the crime scene
(Evidence from The People v. Coello | The Uptown Chronicle)

***

On the night of March 11, 2011 Joey Adovasio, 16, was playing video games in his room with his friend, Michael Plagianos.  Joey’s mother cooked broccoli, chicken and avocado rabe in the kitchen of their apartment in the Throgs Neck section of the Bronx, according to his testimony.  Friends and family described Tina as a health nut, extremely conscious of what she ate and in excellent physical shape.  She was 5 foot 5 inches tall and strong; her nickname at the New York City Sports Club gym in the Bronx where she worked out was Tina the Tank.  She had a classic beauty, with dimples when she smiled and long, blond hair that flowed past her shoulders.

While Joey, his friend and mother his were eating, Coello walked into the kitchen, looked in the refrigerator and asked Tina if she was cooking.

“Yeah, what does it look like?”  She responded.

Coello then walked out of the apartment.  Joey left shortly after in his mother’s 2008 Honda Acura TL, which he had recently learned to drive.  When Joey would return at 11:30 pm that night, according to court documents, his mother would be dead, her body hidden from his sight inside their pink-stone apartment.

Coello and Adovasio’s apartment
(Photo by Marlisse Silver Sweeney | The Uptown Chronicle)

After leaving the building, Coello had driven to a nearby Rite-Aid store, bought almonds and a protein shake and ate them in his car.  He, too, was health-conscious and often would drink his meals, his defense counsel, Renee Hill, said in an interview in December of 2012.

“On the day of the murder, Eddy was having the best day of his life,” Hill said at her office in the Williamsbridge section of the Bronx.  “He loved his job so much, even his supervisors would tell him to take a vacation.”

Coello, who had left the NYPD, worked as a physician’s assistant for Dr. Michael Cushner, an orthopedic surgeon in Yonkers.  Cushner did not respond to phone calls, but according to Hill the two had a very close working relationship.  On March of 2011, Coello had attended a conference in New York City with Cushner and another colleague.  He was in a great mood, said Hill.  On the drive home there was a lot of traffic and Adovasio started texting him, mad that he wasn’t home on time.

“You want to live your life like a single guy then go ahead and take your shit and leave.  Tired of you and your disrespectful ways.  Can’t stay in this relationship,”  said the text message, according to court documents.

“Sick of it,” said another.

And then, “Sorry”

The text messages continued until Coello reached the apartment and then left again shortly after.  “Cause I could run the streets if I choose,” was the last text message Adovasio sent to Coello, which he told police when he reported her missing less than 24 hours later.

***

The relationship between Coello and Adovasio was described by both Hill and Assistant District Attorney Edward Talty as tumultuous.  “They should have parted ways a long time ago,” said Hill.  Court documents show that in 2006, Adovasio applied for an order of protection against Coello for herself and her four children: Joey, Alexis and Michael from a previous marriage, and Mia, the daughter she had with Coello.

But she kept going back to the relationship.

At trial, Joey testified that in 2007 he saw his mother with a black eye and a gash on her eyebrow:  “She told me that Eddy held her down with his legs and punched her in the face.”

In 2008, Adovasio wrote a letter to the Bronx District Attorney’s office, pleading with the office to drop the charges that had been filed against Coello.  In the letter, she said that she made this decision on her own, was not coerced and no longer wanted to pursue the charges.

Mila Ramirez, 44, was one of Adovasio’s colleagues at Sound Shore Hospital and had trained Coello when he was learning to be a physician’s assistant.  “[Eddy] bragged about her,” she said, referring to Adovasio, and in his testimony Joey referenced happier times in the couple’s relationship and marriage.

“When they had good days, thing were really great,” said Hill.  The couple, Hill added, would work out together and both were interested in healthy eating and healthy lifestyles.  Phillip and Yvette Llenas lived next door to Coello and Adovasio in Throgs Neck.  The couple would often see them together with their little girl, and Yvette described Adovasio as friendly; the two would chat about their children.  “I never would have thought she was in a situation like that,” said Yvette, referring to the rocky relationship between Coello and Adovasio, in an interview at her apartment in December, 2012.

Yvette recalled a conversation with Adovasio about domestic violence.  Both women worked in health care and social work.  Yvette works for New York City social services.  “I had a woman…next door to me, going through so much tragedy and I never knew that – that’s what bothers me,” she said.

Adovasio’s autopsy report cites her cause of death as strangulation and blunt force injuries of the head and chest.  At trial, experts testified that it takes two to four minutes of pressure on the neck for a loss of consciousness to cause death.  Adovasio was killed shortly after she ate dinner with her son; the broccoli and chicken were undigested in her stomach.

***

Adrienne Susco’s SUV arrived at the Carmel Metro North Train Station in Upstate New York in December 2012.  It was unmistakable.  The back window was covered with a picture of her daughter, Adovasio, and the words, “Cissy, forever in our hearts.”  Inside the SUV, Adovasio’s funeral program and articles from the trial were displayed on the dashboard.

“It’s hard to talk about her,” Susco said as she drove the ten minutes from the train station to her picturesque green-shuttered home, with a sprawling backyard filled with evergreens.  Her eyes welled with tears as she drove along the wooded highway.

Inside the home, Mia, 7, was dressed in purple pants, a purple shirt and a purple headband.  Her grandmother was pleased with her choice of outfit and thanked her for looking so nice.  A gold locket with a picture of her smiling mother hung around the child’s neck.

Adrienne, Tina and Mia
(Photo taken from Facebook | The Uptown Chronicle)

Mia was excited about Christmas and her upcoming trip into the city with her grandmother, aunt and cousin to see the Rockettes perform at Radio City Music Hall.  Mia studies dance.  She asked Santa for an American Girl Doll for Christmas and proudly showed off the holly strung up the staircase and angels perched in the hall that she had helped arrange that weekend.

Susco had explained during the car ride to her house how hard it was for her as Christmas approached, that all she could think about was her daughter, how tired she was, but how she had to keep up the traditions for Mia.  Susco and her husband Frank have permanent custody of the child.  Mia had been living with them since before her mother’s death.  Susco thought that Adovasio asked if Mia could stay with them because of difficulties finding babysitters with her shift work, but now Susco said she realized that it was because of Adovasio’s abusive home life.

Stephanie Susco, Adrienne’s daughter-in-law, sat down at the island in the family’s kitchen to talk about Adovasio.  The two women grew up together in the Pelham Bay section of the Bronx.

“To know her was to love her, really,” said Stephanie.  She explained Adovasio’s nickname, Cissy.  “It almost feels weird to call her Tina,” she said.  Adovasio was named after Adrienne’s sister, but her younger brother called her Cissy, for sister, and it stuck.

Adovasio graduated from Spelman High School in the Bronx on the honor roll and married her first husband, Joe Adovasio at 20.  Shortly after, she had her first two children, Joey and then Alexis.  “Her happy years were with her kids,” said Stephanie.  The young couple bought a house in the Bronx and then Adovasio started nursing school in Riverdale while pregnant with her third child.  “She always had the tendency to help others,” explained Adrienne.  Tina and Joey, meanwhile, developed their own problems and eventually divorced.  Tina was 30.

Although she was a fitness fanatic, Adovasio wasn’t always as fastidious about exercise and healthy eating.  Her family recalled that her favorite dessert growing up was mint chocolate chip ice-cream.  The gym, after her marriage to Coello, was, “her release,” explained Stephanie, though family members said they were unaware of domestic violence at home.  “She had such an uplifting job, but in the same token, what darkness she really lived,” said Stephanie, eyes filled with tears.

***

On March 11, 2011, Joey Adovasio returned to the family apartment at 11:30 p.m.  He testified that he peeked into his mother and Coello’s room but only Eddy was in the bed.  He noticed that Eddy was fully dressed and that he was lying on the side closest to the bathroom.  Talty, the assistant district attorney on the case, said in an interview in November of 2012 that he believed Adovasio’s body was hidden from Joey in that bathroom.

The next morning Joey awakened around 10 a.m.  “I went into the kitchen, and Alexis and Eddy were out there, and Eddy just kept telling me, ‘You’re my alibi, you see my car, it hasn’t moved from that spot,’” Joey said at trial.

But it had.  A screw had loosened on a neighbor’s surveillance video and it shifted to become slightly askew, said Talty.  It recorded the walkway of 1166 Edison Avenue where Coello and Adovasio lived.  At 1:30 a.m. on March 12, 2011, it captured a male figure walking out to his car, backing it up to the house and carrying a large, “tree-like thing,” covered in white, presumably a sheet, as described by Talty, out to the vehicle.  The figure then returned to the car, parked it and walked back into the house.  At around 3 a.m. the figure left again and returned at 6 a.m..

Joey didn’t know where his mother was and became concerned.  “I just started checking, like, her credit cards and stuff to see if she was spending money, because I didn’t know where to start,” testified Joey.  “I was calling friends.”  It wasn’t like his mother not to be in contact.  Joey was supposed to drive her to work that morning, so he could keep the car.  He called the hospital.  She wasn’t there.  At trial, the assistant prosecutor Jennifer Cruz asked him whether his mother would always try to keep in touch.  His answer, “Always.”

Coello and Alexis went to the 45^th Precinct and reported Adovasio as a missing person that afternoon.  In his statement to police, Coello said, “She was very upset with me.  She went and hit me with her right hand…she started to scream at me that she was leaving me and clawed me with her left hand.”  Medical reports show Eddy Coello’s DNA under her fingernails.

A police officer who lived in the precinct and was familiar with both Coello and Adovasio knew that she shouldn’t be missing, according to Talty.  Even though Adovasio was missing less than 24 hours, the investigation into her disappearance began.

***

In the maternity nurses’ lounge at Sound Shore Hospital, a corkboard hung among the toy-drive notices and time cards.  Pinned to the board were three pictures of Adovasio.  In the midst of assisting patients in labor, teaching new mothers how to breast feed, comforting other patients and a myriad of other duties – all of which Adovasio had performed on a daily basis — the nurses took time to talk about their beloved colleague in early December of 2012.

“She was very kind.  Everyone loved working with her,” said Maureen Miller.  Miller described her as an organized and fastidious nurse whom her patients cared deeply for as well.  When she died, a patient sent them a photo of Adovasio after she had delivered the patient’s baby.  In the operating room, the staff at Sound Shore referred to Adovasio’s professionalism.

“She seemed so strong here.  (She was) never upset, never complained,” said Miller.  Adovasio would always be talking about her children, according to her colleagues, and wanted them to have the best education possible.  When Catherine Tully, a fellow nurse, discussed her children’s education with Adovasio, Tully recalled that Adovasio explained her decision to send her children to a private Catholic school.  “I just like them to have God in their life every day,” said Adovasio.  The staff at Sound Shore has held two fundraisers for the eduction funds of Adovasio’s children.

Elizabeth Goehl, another nurse at Sound Shore, remembered Adovasio for her kindness.  “She wanted to make sure everyone else was taken care of,” said Goehl and described how Adovasio would help the nurses with their appearances: plucking eye-brows, dying hair, encouraging exercise and healthy eating.  “If you knew her, you’d never believe she was going through that [abusive relationship],” said Goehl.

Looking back, however, her colleagues now see hints of her struggles.  Goehl said that Adovasio had told her that she had a marriage license, but she kept putting off marrying Coello.  Then, one day, she told her friend that they married in a civil ceremony.  “Are you happy?” Goehl asked her.

“I think it was the right thing to do,” Adovasio told Goehl.

Miller recalled that in the December before her death, Adovasio spent two to three days in the hospital, reasoning that she couldn’t drive back and forth on the snowy roads.  Miller thought it was odd at the time that her husband wouldn’t come and pick her up.  She was, “always so happy,” said Miller, but she, “looked tired in the end.”

Goehl, Adovasio and Miller
(Photo taken from Facebook | The Uptown Chronicle)

***

On the night he killed Adovasio, Coello had returned home with the intention to pack a bag and stay at his mother’s house, according to Renee Hill, his attorney.  Adovasio thought he was cheating on her.  The two had an altercation and according to Hill, Coello blacked out, panicked and the next thing he remembered was waking up with his hands on his wife’s throat.

When Coello reported Adovasio as a missing person, Hill said that it “makes me believe that in his mind that’s what he wanted it to be.”

It took Coello a few days to come to terms with Adovasio’s death, according to Hill.  Then he hired her and turned himself in.  Before that, he went to Cushner and asked to meet him in his car, where Coello told him, “Doc, I’m very sorry that I had to put you through this and the office through this, but I did it,” Cushner testified.  At trial, Cushner said he was concerned about Coello’s mental health and worried that the man would commit suicide.

Coello also reached out to his good friend, Amanda Schuman.  The two met in school and had dated on and off since 2007.  “He just asked for my forgiveness as a friend and asked, you know, if I would support him,” she testified at trial.  The pair drove to Coello’s mother’s apartment, where he had gathered the rest of his family: his two sisters, his nephew, mother and told them, according to Schuman that, “He was going to need our support to make it through this and he was just hoping that God would forgive him.”

Coello in custody
(Photo taken from Facebook | The Uptown Chronicle)

Before he turned himself in, according to court records and testimony, Coello asked Schuman to look out for his two daughters from previous relationships, Brianna and Aryanna.  He also phoned Brianna’s mother, Monica Rodriguez, and asked her to make sure Brianna got counseling and maintained a relationship with her Aryanna.  Coello’s family did not want to comment for this article, but Rodriguez testified that Brianna was very close with her father.  Aryanna said in a text message that she loves her father dearly.

***

On October 15, 2012 it took the Bronx Supreme Court jury less than four hours to convict Coello of second degree murder in the death of Tina Adovasio.  Almost a month later, Coello stood before Judge Ralph Fabrizio, dressed in a black suit and tie and a white shirt.  His hands were in cuffs behind his back.  The courtroom was filled with his and Adovasio’s friends and family.

“Eddy Coello,” read the court clerk.  “You’re being sentenced for murder in the second degree.”

Stephanie, Adrienne and Miller all spoke to the judge.  They told the court about Adovasio’s nickname, Cissy, that she was compassionate and brave, easygoing and honest.  Miller explained how, “even now in the OR you hear her,” and Stephanie cried that her sister-in-law will, “never see her children graduate school or dance with her sons at [their weddings].”

Adrienne Susco, frail from stress and kidney problems slowly walked up to the front of the courtroom when it was her time to speak.  “A mother should never have to bury her child,” she said.  Trying not to cry, she told Coello that, “Mia will never have to know the monster of a father she has.”

Hill spoke briefly, and told the court that this was a tragic event that left two families broken.  She said in an interview later that Coello was overwhelmed and missed his daughters very much and  that he also missed Adovasio.  “I don’t think in his wildest dreams he imagined he could lose it to the point where he could take her life,” she said.

When it was his turn to speak, Coello, still staring forward, apologized to Adrienne, members of Adovasio’s family and her children.  “I’m sorry for putting you through this…for the devastation I’ve brought to your lives,” he said.  “There was never a day that I did not want justice for Tina.  There are no words to convey the magnitude of the sadness I feel.”

Judge Fabrizio listened to Coello’s words.  Then he gave him the maximum sentence, twenty-five years to life, for the death of his wife.

Forty-one children sat on the hardwood floor of the oldest mansion in Manhattan. They were feet away from the octagonal sitting room where General George Washington designed the plan that led to victory in the battle of Harlem Heights in 1776.

Carol Ward, Morris-Jumel Director of Education, speaks to a class from Long Island’s Bellmore School District (Photo by Sarah Whites-Koditschek | The Uptown Chronicle)

Earlier that morning, in the basement of the mansion, a small boy raised his hand and said, “Someone told me the third floor is like, haunted” said a small boy. “The third floor is our office. It’s haunted by us,” replied Ward. “The rumor is the house is haunted,” she conceded.  “Someone did die in the house but it’s not called the murder house,” she replied to a child who had asked about the name of the mansion.  Ward asked the children to imagine themselves as pre-revolutionary colonists: Do people in the colonies have a representative? If we think the taxes are too high, who can we complain to? There was no government here the people could talk to.”

Many groups of school children have had similar conversations in the Morris-Jumel mansion since it became a museum in 1904. It was built by Roger Morris, a British Colonel in 1765 in the Italian-influenced Palladian style. George Washington spent one month in the mansion during the Revolutionary War in 1776, when American troops successfully defeated the British. The building sits on the second highest point in Manhattan, and has expansive hilltop views. In July 10, 1790 Washington returned for a nostalgic dinner with members of his cabinet, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton and Henry W. Knox.

The house was later purchased by a French-Haitian wine merchant, Stephen Jumel, and his wife, Eliza Jumel, who became one of the wealthiest businesswomen in Manhattan after the death of her husband, and who was briefly married to Aaron Burr.  After her death in 1865, the building changed hands several times, until being turned into a museum by the Daughters of the American Revolution in 1904.  The museum features the largely French décor of the Jumels, including painted linoleum floors, papered floral wallpaper and canopy beds.

Ken Moss, the museum’s director, says the museum can give a sense of what the city was like in 1765.  “New York is a really interesting city. It has some of the greatest museums in the world. People can be spoiled here, but unlike places like Philadelphia or Boston, we don’t have the same sense of our colonial and revolutionary heritage. Morris-Jumel and a few other buildings are really important to that period.”

Monica Crichton was one of the fourth graders visiting from The Bellmore School District in Long Island. She is nine years old and was accompanied on the trip by her mother, Jessica Crichton. Standing on the mansion’s lawn, she said she especially enjoyed learning about the garden, and about Eliza Jumel, whom she learned lived here longer than anyone. “I like picking leaves,” she said. Monica Crichton said she would have liked to take a shower in the days of Washington, because of the many kinds of herbal soap she would have had. She was impressed by the wooden beds, which she said were made extra tall because there were so many rats. Overall, she said she would prefer to live in present times because she likes having electricity.

Jovan Misla is a 20-year-old museum intern from the Bronx. He is part of New York City’s “Young Adult Internship Program.” Misla has worked on the grounds and cleaned the museum’s exhibits for several months. He said he has come to appreciate the space.  While he cleans, he tries to imagine the people who used to live here playing the piano, or sleeping in the beds.

George Washington’s meeting room (Photo by Sarah Whites-Koditschek | The Uptown Chronicle )

“It’s surprising that this form of architecture still exists in the city,” he said.  “It’s quiet and it’s peaceful. Here you get the vibes from the 1700s. Walking around the way it is set up, you time travel a bit. I believe it [the history] is still meaningful to people. One of our great leaders was in this home. You can place yourself in his room, walk around, and think about a normal day for George Washington.”

Jay Rothman is a 64-year-old interior designer at “Design Spectrum,” who visits historic buildings in the region several times a year to get design ideas. He said in an interview, he doesn’t think there is anything particularly remarkable about the décor of the mansion, but that he enjoys it because it is not “overly restored. It’s just like a piece of history, walking into something so old.” Rothman said he was particularly interested in the unusual wallpaper patterns in the building, as well as glasses displayed on the dining room table. As a designer, he said.  “These are the little details that you have to learn.”

Several residents in the neighborhood said in interviews that they were familiar with the museum and had visited it, particularly as young students.

Keith Francis, 38, is a barber in Hamilton Heights, who grew up on 156^th and Amsterdam Ave. He spoke of the coble stone streets on Jumel Terrace, and the peacefulness of the block.  “It’s a like a whole ‘nother world two blocks over. I think for the most part, people in the neighborhood do know about it. It’s a well-kept jewel.  If you’re not really familiar with the neighborhood, you wouldn’t know it was there.”

Rafael Rodriguez, 60, is an auto repair mechanic from the Dominican Republic. He has lived in Washington Heights for 42 years. He said he cares about revolutionary history. “I know Mr. Jumel immigrated from France. I always liked history and I know America has a very rich history.” He said he feels connected to local history, even though he was born in the Dominican.  “This is my country, because I’ve been here longer than I was in my country, over 40 years.”

A fireplace at the mansion (Photo by Sarah Whites-Koditschek | The Uptown Chronicle)

Barbara Mitchell is the Director of Visitor Services at the museum. She has had the job for 15 years.  She said the museum gets about 15,000 visitors a year, roughly half of whom are foreign.  “The big challenge is really the outreach in the neighborhood, she said, adding that language is the real issue.  “We don’t have anyone who speaks Spanish.” According to Mitchell, the neighborhood has tried to expand its reach by displaying the work of local artists and musicians.

Andrea Arroyo’s work was being exhibited at the museum. It depicts the women of the museum on cloth sheets draped around the furniture. Arroyo was particularly interested in the story of Eliza Jumel. “She was a very special woman,” she said in a telephone interview.  “Strong, humble…ambitious.  I think she’s pretty amazing. She was pretty clear on what she wanted in life and went and got it.”  Arroyo is originally from Mexico and said the incorporation of her artwork in the museum was a “mix and match,” reflective of New York City’s history; as an immigrant she has integrated her work into the historical fabric of the oldest mansion in the city, once visited by presidents. Leaving her artwork in the Morris-Jumel mansion, she said, is like “holding history in my hands.”

Street mechanics operate in the customer parking lot behind the Auto Zone on Jerome Avenue. (Photo by Bryan Cohen | The Uptown Chronicle)

In the parking lot behind the Auto Zone parts and supply store on Jerome Ave. in the Highbridge neighborhood of the South Bronx, a man in oil-stained camouflage pants with a gap-toothed grin approaches a customer returning to his car. “Need some mechanical work?” he asks.

The man identified himself only as Skip, because he is an unlicensed mechanic. Skip is a 64-year-old man who lives on Nelson Ave. in Highbridge. He’s been working as an illegal street mechanic in the Auto Zone parking lot at 1551 Jerome Ave. since the store opened eight years ago.

“I have a big mouth, I can’t take shit from people,” he said. “So I have to work on my own.”

Skip isn’t an Auto Zone employee. When customers return to their cars with recently purchased parts, he offers to install them on the spot for up to half the price of a nearby mechanic.

His patrons stand to save a lot of money. By shopping at Auto Zone, one of the nation’s largest chain auto part retailers, customers get car parts without a mechanic’s mark-up. Skip will install the part for just $30 to $40 cash, with no overhead costs and no business taxes to pay.

Equipped with a jack and a tool box, Skip said he can do brakes, mufflers, oil changes, and a number of part changes. He usually makes around $300 a week, but $500 weeks are possible. Street mechanics who speak Spanish in this heavily Dominican neighborhood will take in more, he said.

The private lot is located on the north side of the Auto Zone building, where a narrow alley runs back to the paved area. The only warning against street work is a small sign on the alley wall that reads “Repairing of vehicles is not permitted.” There are four dumpsters in the lot. On a late August afternoon the dumpsters brimming with old car parts, packaging from new parts, oil soaked rags, and emptied bottles of car paints, bonds, and cleaners. Ten people are working on cars, either for themselves or someone else.

Thirty years ago, Bronx’s Highbridge neighborhood was known in part for unlicensed auto businesses and chop shops. Today the high concentration of mechanics and car-related shops are licensed and legal. But a cheap fix from an unlicensed mechanic is still easy to find; they’ve just moved from garages to the street.

There are 25 car related businesses in a busy 6-block stretch of Jerome Ave. in Highbridge. Most, if not all, are legal with up-to-date permits from the city and state. Mechanics in the area say the glut of legitimate shops alone leads to severe price battles. The street mechanics only exacerbate the problem.

Wilson Travarez is a mechanic at YC&L Auto on Jerome Ave., just a few blocks from the Auto Zone. He said he struggles to stay competitive with street mechanics like Skip because they don’t charge taxes. “If I tell a customer it’s $40 just in taxes, he’ll go down the street,” he said. Travarez said that leads many shops, including his, to not charge tax, causing them to fall behind on paying their own business taxes.

Auto Zone manager Mike Rodriguez said he’s fully aware of the illegal work the street mechanics are doing in his store’s parking lot and admitted it’s a boost to business. “These guys are at every Auto Zone, it’s not just our Auto Zone,” he said. “Some owners allow it, some don’t. It does bring more business because we don’t have a shop onsite.”

Skip said some managers are better than others. Occasionally police come to clear out the lot. Rodriguez said he’s never called the cops because he’s never received any complaints. “My personal opinion is as long as they’re being respectful, I don’t have a problem with it. They’re just trying to make a buck.”

Pedro Estevez is less sympathetic. As president and founder of the Highbridge-based United Auto Merchants Association, Estevez has made it his mission to professionalize the auto work industry in the city. He said Auto Zone’s lot mechanics are putting lives at risk when they install parts without a license.

“What if there’s an accident and a guy and his family are killed. Who is responsible? Is Auto Zone going to pay? Is Auto Zone going to be sued? I hope so,” he said. “They’re contributing to the delinquency of the community and robbing business owners of their livelihood.”

Rodriguez said his store isn’t responsible for the work Skip and others do because they’re not Auto Zone employees. If customers ask about the lot mechanics, he said Auto Zone employees are instructed to tell customers not to use them.

Skip said he only agrees to work on cars and repairs he knows. If he doesn’t know how to do a fix he tells

Pedro Estevez, president of the United Auto Merchants Association, wants a clampdown on street mechanics. (Photo by Bryan Cohen | The Uptown Chronicle)

customers to go to a shop. The Auto Zone parking lot isn’t the only place unlicensed mechanics operate in the area. Many jack-up cars right on the street.

“It’s a quality of life issue with these guys setting up shop on the street,” said Jose Rodriguez, district manager for Bronx Community Board Four which includes Highbridge. Rodriguez said the community board occasionally fields complaints from residents when street mechanics block traffic and sidewalks, or leave parts and oil strewn about outside. In those instances, Rodriguez said he forwards issues on to the police or the city’s Department of Consumer Affairs.

The community relations office at NYPD’s 44th precinct did not return requests for comment about street mechanics in the neighborhood.

Rodriguez said he rarely hears complaints from legitimate shop owners about street mechanics. UAMA founder Estevez said that’s because many shop owners are actually complicit in the illegal street mechanic business. Estevez said street mechanics set up in front of legitimate shops and bring in their own customers. Then they give a kickback to the shop owner for letting them use the space. Space is at a premium for shops on Jerome Ave. and surrounding streets. It’s common to see shop owners examining cars and doing business on the sidewalk or double parked in the street, making it difficult to tell who’s licensed and who’s not.

Monchy Cabrerra, 50, moved his shop, Monchy Auto Repair, off Jerome Ave. less than a year ago to Edward L. Grant Highway and Nelson Ave. Cabrerra said the move was, in part, to get away from the street mechanics on Jerome. That hasn’t worked.

“We can do a brake job for $100 and this guy will do it for $40,” he said, pointing up the street towards a man jacking up a car on the street. “We have to pay taxes, light, permits; they don’t have to pay anything.”

Johnny Ramirez with his baby daughter in their old apartment at 735 Bryant Avenue. Ramirez and his family have since moved to Brooklyn. (Photo by Joanna Seow | The Uptown Chronicle)

It has been less than two years since stay-at-home dad Johnny Ramirez and his family moved into Hunts Point. During that time, he said, parts of their ceiling collapsed five times, his daughters went to the hospital three times, and two of his neighbors moved out of the building at 735 Bryant Avenue.

“This is a nightmare for me,” he said in October, standing in a doorway where cardboard was taped to the door to keep out drafts. “The water comes out brown from the tap and shower. I have to buy gallons of water for the baby to drink. In winter the heat comes on whenever they want. The lights go out constantly.”

He dug out pictures showing the ceiling in a corner of the kitchen collapsing onto the stove, revealing festering, black mold. Once, after the family asked for help, Ramirez said, the gaping hole remained open for 37 days. Water also leaks into the walls, he said, causing the paint to discolor and peel. Pests such as mice and cockroaches make appearances from time to time.

Ramirez, 42, moved into the two-bedroom apartment in April 2011, after getting custody of his two daughters, aged 6 and 6 months. His wife, Darcee, 27, who works for a catering company, moved in as well after a period of separation. Since then, they have had to bring the girls to the hospital three times for bronchitis and bloody noses, which they believe are related to the mold inside the ceiling.

Since October 27 of 2011, Ramirez and other residents in the 49-unit  building have lodged 126 complaints about the troubled building, according to the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD). The complaints include water leaks, missing smoke detectors, mold and vermin.

Even a previous superintendant, Christian Suarez, 28, called the conditions in the building “unlivable”. He worked there from October to December of 2011. “I wasn’t happy with the living standards,” he said over the phone. “I had to make a choice, so I had to move on.” The building did not have a live-in superintendant as of early December 2012.

Mitchel Maidman, the president of Townhouse Management, which manages the property, seemed surprised to hear that there were unhappy tenants. Since Bronx VIII LLC, a company affiliated with Townhouse Management, became the mortgagee in March 2011, the company has spent $500,000 fixing the building, he said in a phone interview. “I guarantee that the violations have dropped. Even if violations are issued we clear them very quickly.” Townhouse Management became the managing agents of the property after taking ownership in July 2012.

According to the website of New York City’s public advocate Bill de Blasio, 735 Bryant Avenue has improved enough to be removed from the Worst Landlords Watchlist. The website says that the number of infractions at the building dropped from 484 to 79. As of early December, HPD listed 98 open violations, of which 18 are C Class violations, meaning they require immediate attention.

“The tenants should be thrilled. We put in a new elevator for around $100,000,” Mailman said.

When told about a tenant’s complaint that the ceiling over the bathroom had collapsed, his reply was, “Maybe the tenant on top of them does not know how not to overflow the bathroom. We can only fix the problems when they happen, the laws don’t allow us to evict tenants for being bad tenants.” He said that the company screens every tenant to try to ensure that they will care for the apartments.

The building was previously owned by corporations controlled by Bronx real estate operator Frank Palazzolo, named by The Village Voice in 2010 as one of New York’s ten worst landlords. In March 2011, the mortgage was transferred to Bronx VIII LLC, which hired Townhouse Management to operate the building. Although Maidman said that his company was not affiliated with Palazollo in any way, Palazzolo Holding V Corp is listed as one of the parties on the building’s deed in the Automated City Register Information System.

Since January 2011, Maidman has personally visited the building “numerous times” – more than once a month, he said. He said he has been inside some apartments, and seemed satisfied with the condition of the building. “As a management company we do our best to ensure that our buildings are the best buildings on every block,” he said.

The elevator inside 735 Bryant Avenue (Photo by Joanna Seow | The Uptown Chronicle)

For resident Yuli Martinez, 37, a stay-at-home mother of three whose husband Nelson, 28, is in the national guard, this is far from the case.

“I’m not even sure how they passed the inspection before they rented the apartment out,” she said. There are holes in the floor of her apartment where mice come in, the light fixtures are loose, leaving the kitchen lightbulb dangling precariously from the ceiling, and the locks for her windows are broken. In January, there was a hole in the roof of the bathroom, that let water from the floor above leak into the walls and mold developed. After she lodged a complaint with 311 – the city’s hotline for non-emergency services – it took four months before the building’s superintendant came to fix the problem.

Martinez said she is worried mainly for the safety of her three daughters, aged 17, 11 and one. She said, “My husband is in the military. Once a month he gets called up for weekends and [he serves] in emergencies, so it’s just me and the girls. It’s scary to think that the windows aren’t secured at all.” Paint also is chipping off the walls in some places and she is afraid that her baby daughter will fall sick if she ingests any. She said the paint has not been tested for lead.

Bronx VIII LLC took Martinez to court because she stopped paying her rent in April this year, after the rent program she was in ended. Unfazed, she said “as long as they hadn’t fixed whatever needed to be fixed, I wasn’t going to pay rent.”

“Some people want to make (their apartment) better, other people don’t really care because it’s just the roof over their heads,” she said. “I’m trying to make it a home.”

Joyce Campbell-Culler, the chairperson of the Housing and Land Use committee at Community Board 2, which covers Hunts Point and Longwood, said that Townhouse Management came to a board meeting last year, when it first became the landlord. The company said that it would fix the door to the roof, the entrance door, and clear the garbage in the basement. “The things they said then that they would do, I believe they did it,” Campbell-Culler said.

“A lot of it, in my opinion, has to do with the residents,” she admitted. “The turnover there is high. People aren’t looking at it as a home, they don’t set root.” She added that many people cannot afford to move to better-quality housing, and end up shifting from one dilapidated building to another. “There is not enough standard quality housing in Hunts Point.”

She said that there should be some criteria for approving landlords in the city. “The HPD needs to pay greater attention to who they are giving new rentals to,” she said. “They need to pay attention to their records and what tenants are saying.”

If residents come to the community board with their woes, the board will try to mediate and develop communication between the landlord and tenants. The board will also call the city for the tenants to launch a formal complaint.

The outside of 735 Bryant Avenue (Photo by Joanna Seow | The Uptown Chronicle)

Mothers on the Move is a community-based organization that works with Hunts Point residents on housing issues. Wanda Salaman, the executive director, said that the organization advises them on their right to “a livable apartment with heat, hot water and no mice.” They also have a tenant complaint form that they will send to the owner. If he or she does not respond, the tenants can start an Housing Part proceeding against the landlord, a legal proceeding in Housing Court that forces the landlord to correct building violations. Mothers on the Move has helped area residents to get their repairs.

Salaman said that one reason landlords may put off doing repairs is to force people out of buildings. Once they are out, the next person can be charged a higher rent. When questioned about this, Maidman, of Townhouse Management, said it would not be “a successful business strategy”, because tenants would simply not pay rent rather than move out if they do not believe the landlord is acting on their complaints. Even if the landlord were to take a tenant to court about the rent they owe, the judge would likely say that the tenants do not have to pay rent if the landlord does not make the repairs. It would be simpler to just pay tenants to leave, he said.

Salaman and Campbell-Culler both agree that people often find it easier to move to another apartment than stay and fight the system. Salaman added, the reason why people still end up living in poor conditions is that “Some new people coming in from the shelter system find it easier to move into the fist apartment they find, rather than going around to look for apartments. It’s a cycle.”

By November, Ramirez had grown tired of waiting for the conditions at 735 Bryant Avenue to improve. During Hurricane Sandy, water came into the apartment from around the windows and he had to place buckets in the rooms to catch the water. On November 11, he and his family finally made the move to an apartment in Brooklyn, near where his mother lives. The conditions there are much better, he said. “My kids are my priority,” he said. “I couldn’t take it, I’ve got a family to worry about.”