 |
| Prince Joshua Avitto, 6, who was known as "P.J.," was fatally stabbed Sunday. |
Click here to read previous story
The morning after a man stabbed and killed a 6-year-old boy and critically wounded a 7-year-old girl in an elevator in a Brooklyn housing project, the killer remained at-large and community leaders said the search was being complicated because there was no video surveillance in the building.
Some 12 hours after the brutal and apparently random attack, a police helicopter circled above the East New York neighborhood, K-9 units were deployed and dozens of police officers swept through the Boulevard Houses on Schenck Avenue looking for witnesses.
Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, said in an interview that $400,000 had been allocated in 2010 for cameras to be installed in the project but that the New York City Housing Authority failed to act.
“To date that money is sitting there and has not been activated yet,” Mr. Adams said. “After it was allocated, it fell into the Nycha black hole.”
At a news conference, he repeated the charge.
Six-year-old Prince Joshua Avitto, who was known as Boy, 6, Dies After a Stabbing in BrooklynJUNE 1, 2014
PRIORITIES Cameras monitor about 100 of the more than 330 public-housing complexes in the city, including the Walt Whitman Houses, in Brooklyn.Big City: The Watchmen’s Misdirected GazeAUG. 18, 2012
“The blood is on the hands of those Nycha employees who slowed up the cameras,” he said.
A representative of the housing authority said that the agency was looking into the matter and that it had made efforts to install cameras throughout the vast system of public housing.
The authority is responsible for the management of 334 developments with 2,600 buildings, 3,300 elevators and thousands more entryways, stairwells and hallways. The authority estimates that it would cost at least $200 million to install “an ideal network of Nycha security cameras,” according to its website.
Mr. Adams said that the girl who was attacked, Mikayla Capers, was able to provide a brief description of the suspect to the police, which was aiding in the search. Family members said she was briefly conscious Sunday night after the attack.
Police Commissioner William J. Bratton is expected to brief reporters later Monday morning on the investigation.
 |
| Mikayla Capers, 7, was fatally stabbed Sunday. |
On Sunday night, Deputy Chief Patrick Conry said the suspect had been described by witnesses as a heavyset young man in his 20s. He fled the scene on foot, leaving behind one dead child, one critically wounded child and the bloody knife used in the attack.
Mikayla and her friend, Prince Joshua Avitto, were heading out on the spring evening to get Icees and hopped in an elevator at the Boulevard Houses around 6 p.m.
When the elevator reached the ground floor, its doors opened to reveal a scene of carnage, according to the police.
The boy was mortally wounded. The girl stumbled into the lobby before collapsing. And the man fled outside on foot.
On Monday morning, with the tip of her cane holding down a blowing ribbon of police tape, and the soles of her shoes mere feet from splatters of blood on the sidewalk in front of the Boulevard Houses, Regenia Trevathan described the damage done to her great-granddaughter.
“There are multiple stab wounds to her body, defensive wounds to her hands — there’s more than 15 stab wounds to my child,” Ms. Trevathan, 62, said, referring to Mikayla.
“I just can’t fathom it,” she said.
Anabelle Diaz Alston, the godmother of the boy who was killed, was standing outside the family’s building on Monday, her eyes full of tears.
“Show me that you found something,” she pleaded, gesturing to the police. “Everybody’s standing around, and a little boy died for no reason. He died for an Icee. It doesn’t make no sense. You killed a baby for what? For nothing. It makes no sense.”
She railed at the system and spoke of the fear that has gripped her — fear of senseless, random violence: “I have mace,” she said, “and I’m going to use it.”
No comments:
Post a Comment