ARREST IN AX ATTACK
Cops charge ex-con in grisly hack of ex-gal pal & murder of her friend in B’klyn
Murder victim Savannah Rivera’s ex-boyfriend urged no mercy Sunday for the man charged with brutally slaying his ex with an axe in her Brooklyn home.
“I hope you die in jail,” Rivera’s ex Justin Permaul, 19, wrote to suspect Jerry Brown on Facebook.
“You took my ex-girlfriend’s life away,” Permaul said. “She was such a great person and always wanted to just have fun.”
As Rivera’s family and friends mourned her death, police charged Brown, 34, with murder, attempted murwho and weapon possession in the wee-hours Saturday bloodbath that left Rivera, 20, was two months pregnant, nearly decapitated in a blood-spattered scene of horror.
Brown’s girlfriend, Angela Valle, 21, survived the attack with deep gashes to her head and body. Valle’s 4-year-old daughter miraculously survived the carnage unharmed.
Police were called to the scene around 1:30 a.m. Saturday, after Valle fled the apartment she and Rivera shared in the Bushwick Houses on Flushing Ave. near Humboldt St.
The suspected murder weapon was later found in a building trash compactor, with blood still visible on the blade and an orange price sticker on it, sources said. Brown, an ex-con, was hospitalized for psychiatric evaluation at Wyckoff Heights Medical Center on Sunday. He turned himself in after giving a bizarre phone interview to a producer at WPIX/Channel 11 in which he asked if his girlfriend, Valle, was OK.
Brown served eight years for attempted murder after he pleaded guilty to shooting a man in the chest in Williamsburg in August 2002.
After his release, Brown returned to prison three times for violating parole. His last prison stint began in November 2014, and ended eight months later when he reached his maximum sentence, records show.
His criminal record includes 13 arrests, most reder
cently for possession of stolen property in October. He was arrested for strangulation in January 2017 and has also been busted for assault, robbery, and burglary.
Permaul, who told the Daily News he remained “really close” with Rivera after their breakup, found out about the slaying Saturday while at work in McDonald’s, where the two met. Rivera worked at McDonald’s too.
“I just texted her the day before and I said, ‘I miss you,’ and she texted me, ‘I miss you back,’ and that’s the last conversation we had,” he said.
The ex said Rivera didn’t tell him much about Brown but he knew she was very close with Valle.
“She just wanted to be with her friend. She needed people to help her, basically. Angela was her best friend and she was letting her stay over,” he said.
“I’m just devastated. I can’t believe that happened. I don’t want no one to die like that. I wish you can just pass away in a good way. But not like this.”
Rivera’s relatives were also upset — including her grandmother, Elsa Collazo, who helped raise her and her sisters.
“I’m so sad,” Collazo, 78, told The News Sunday at the family home in Williamsburg as she rubbed the leg of Sebastian, the 3-year-old son of her slain granddaughter.
After Rivera’s mom died of diabetes a decade ago, Collazo raised her and her two sisters. “It’s so empty, the apartment. Because she lived with me,” Collazo said. Collazo said her granddaughter was best friends with Valle and moved in with her — into the apartment where she would be killed — two months ago after becoming pregnant.
“For two months I told her to come back,” Collazo said.
“They were best friends,” she said of Rivera and Valle. “Since they were young.”
“[Valle] came by here to sleep over, to pass time with Savannah,” Collazo said of Valle. “But I never liked her. Or her boyfriend.”
“If the boyfriend had a problem with her friend, he could have let [Rivera] out,” Collazo said of the slaying. “Leave her alone. … I hope he gets the justice he deserves.”
“She was always focused on her son. She worked for him, for us,” Collazo said. “She knew everyone and everyone liked her. She was the best.”
She hasn’t told her greatgrandson his mother is dead. “He thinks she’s away,” Collazo said. “I’ll tell him when he gets older. But now, no.”
“Now, he is my life,” she said.
The Bushwick Houses, home to about 3,000 people, has been marred by violence in recent years.
Cops still haven’t solved the deaths of neighbors Ana Delvalle, 62, and Basil Gray, 54, who were killed just two days apart inside their fifth-floor apartments in May 2018.
Kyon Jackson, 15, was gunned down outside the Bushwick Houses in what his family said was a case of misdeath. taken identity. Prosecutors have charged 20-year-old Elijah Harris with the teen’s
Officer Kevin Brennan of Brooklyn North Anti-Crime Unit narrowly avoided death in February 2012 when he was struck by a bullet that lodged behind his right ear in a shootout at the housing complex.
Residents are shocked by the latest brutal attack and some are wary of their surroundings in general. Maria Rodriguez, 39, has lived there for five years.
“I haven’t had any problems yet, but yeah, it’s scary at night,” she said. “The danger is obvious. This is not a good place.”