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NYCHA allowed a serial-killing handyman to prowl a Brooklyn housing complex, allegedly stabbing, strangling and bludgeoning three elderly women after they failed to pay him, tenants and victim family members charged Thursday.
Long-promised security cameras might have broken the alleged murder spree at Brownsville’s Woodson Houses last year, they said — at least before the last victim was found Monday with a telephone cord still wrapped around her neck.
Kevin Gavin, 66, of Crown Heights, was arrested Thursday in the three murders; he has confessed to killing his victims — the first in 2015, the second in 2019 — because they didn’t pay him for running their errands, sources have told The Post.
The project was slated to get 65 new security cameras — but only got four, installed in the lobby about a year ago, NYPD Chief of Housing David Barrere told reporters at a press conference announcing Gavin’s arrest Thursday.
None of the four cameras contributed to Thursday’s arrest, officials said.
“We need cameras,” said Lamarr Crafton, the oldest grandson of victim Jacolia James, who he said “always talked about the building needing cameras, because on certain occasions there’d be people wandering the building overnight.
“There are no reasons or excuses that are enough for our families,” Crafton said. “This community needs public safety,” he said. “We don’t know whose grandmother or grandfather could be next.”
“It’s been a struggle getting cameras in this development,” complained tenant
association president Diane Johnson.
“It’s always more about money than the quality life,” she said. “The quality of security they gave us is the bottom of the barrel.”
Local politicians also called on the NYPD to investigate further the death of a man who fell from a ladder in September.
The neighborhood gets short shrift, City Council member Inez Barron complained at an afternoon press conference at the Woodson Houses.
“The NYPD has been negligent and has not put the resources into solving these crimes in a timely matter,” she said, blaming “systemic racism.”
“If this were white senior citizens you would have taken the case more seriously the first time around,” said Assemblyman Charles Barron (D-Brooklyn).
NYCHA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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