Police Finally Going After Terrorizing Drug Dealer

By COLlive reporter

The New York Police Department is searching for a wheelchair-bound African American man for his involvement in the death of a 60-year-old man that was found on a stoop outside of a Crown Heights apartment building early Tuesday morning.

Police say surveillance video shows what appears to be two men, one of them in a wheelchair, engaged in some type of dispute on the corner of Schenectady and Lincoln Place, News 12 reported.

Police told the station that it appears the man in the wheelchair then attacked the victim, who is later seen walking back down the block and falling back on a stoop where he was found dead.

Residents who spoke with COLlive.com said it was about time the police took action, calling the man “a notorious drug dealer.”

“He is homeless and lives with a group of other crack, heroin and methamphetamine addicts on the sidewalk in front of a stalled real estate venture on Lincoln Place near Schenectady Avenue,” the resident said. “These men live under the awning and scaffolding of the unfinished building, which, due to failed inspections has been served a stop-work order. The building company cannot remove the awning, so these people have constant shelter.”

The person told COLlive that residents are frustrated that the entire stretch of sidewalk reeks of filth, excrement and debris, and “drug addicts and disreputable individuals can be seen there at all hours of the day, engaging in illicit activities and taking drugs.”

What’s most shocking, he says, is that “dealers stand on the corners and exchange drugs for money in plain sight of the public, working out of the laundromat on the corner. Notably, this is all takes place within a few feet of a public elementary school and playground,” he said.

Neighborhood residents are familiar with the man in the wheelchair, who is known as the ringleader and can typically be found panhandling in the middle of Eastern Parkway near the corner of Schenectady Avenue. He is easily identifiable as he is missing his left leg and uses a wheelchair, they said.

“He is highly aggressive and volatile. Police confirmed that he is contaminated with a litany of STDs and other infectious diseases, telling homeowners on the block to stay away from him and the others,” he told COLlive.

Last Friday, after one of these addicts spit on an Orthodox Jewish woman, police arrived to investigate, the resident says, “albeit far too late to do anything.”

“The responding officer said that they are well aware of the situation, but don’t see any point in dealing with it, since the police lock these people up and they just come back over and over again. Essentially, the officer said that they have given up on this. There is just nothing they can do about it,” he said. “And now a man is dead.”

“Do more people have to die for this to be taken seriously? This man is still on the loose,” the resident concluded. “He is a deranged and dangerous person and people must be warned to stay away from him.”