Fear after third death
More security demanded after woman, 78, killed in apt.
The death of an elderly woman found with a telephone cord wrapped around her neck in her Brooklyn apartment, has advocates demanding increased security Saturday in the building where two other senior citizens were previously slain.
The adult son of victim Juanita Caballero, 78, made the grisly discovery around 5 p.m. Friday after arriving for a visit at her Powell St. home in Brownsville, cops said.
City Councilwoman Inez Barron and the daughter of an earlier murder victim invoked the still-unsolved murders from 2015 and 2019 as they mourned the building’s latest senior citizen death.
“It is so hard to believe that we are here again,” said Lynda James, whose mother Jacolia James was fatally assaulted two years ago. “The lack of security leaves our seniors as sheep circled by wolves. It says ‘They don’t matter.’ It breaks families apart, and leaves holes that cannot be filled.”
Caballero’s son told police that he arrived to find the front door locked and then saw his mother lying in her apartment hallway. He tried to perform CPR but couldn’t revive her, said cops.
An autopsy was been scheduled to determine just how she died, but Barron didn’t mince words about her demise.
“This is the third time that a senior in this residence has been found murdered inside their own apartment,” she said. “The prior two incidents are yet to be resolved. They are still open cases, and I’m very concerned about that as well.”
The first killing in November 2015 involved Myrtle McKinney, 82, who was found dead on her kitchen floor by police.
Initially treated as a death by natural causes, the case was later ruled a homicide after an undertaker noticed a knife wound on the back of her neck. She also suffered three broken ribs.
As in the Caballero case, where detectives found no signs of forced entry and nothing appeared to be missing from the apartment, there was no indication that McKinney’s home was ransacked by her killer, police said at the time.
James filed a $15 million lawsuit against NYCHA last year alleging her mother died because the building lacked the proper security measures, including security cameras and functional locks on its front door — even after the slaying of McKinney.
Building tenant association president Diane Johnson recalled Caballero as a quiet and careful woman.
“I know for a fact that she’s not a tenant that will just open her door for anybody,” she said. “She used to like to come and sit in the lobby before COVID ... She doesn’t bother anybody,
anybody. So what happened to her shouldn’t have happened like that.”
Barron called for the installation of security cameras in the hallways, elevators and the building exterior, along with better lighting and secure doors.
“We are not taking any excuses, we are not waiting for any [more] tragedies to occur here,” she said. “These are our seniors. They’re frail, they’re vulnerable, and we need to make sure that we provide them the protections they are entitled to.”