24‘He was like a super hero’
Slaying of ex-con dad who became beloved helper to neighbors
An ex-con who won over his neighbors with his devotion to keeping their Brooklyn NYCHA building tidy and safe was fatally shot in the face when he answered a knock on his apartment door, police said Monday.
Jeroid Tindal, 47, clung to life for almost a week at Woodhull Medical Center before dying Sunday.
He was shot in the face and chest about 10 p.m. on March 8 by a gunman in Independence Towers, a NYCHA housing development on Taylor St. near Bedford Ave. in Williamsburg.
“I thought I was in a war,” said his next-door neighbor, who gave his name as Moshe and who heard the gunshots that took Tindal’s life.
“He was a very nice guy, a very good man. He’s one of the best neighbors here,” said Moshe, who knew Tindal had done time and said the slain man had even shown him scars from past bullet wounds. “He’s cleaning every day in the hallway, because the Housing [NYCHA] isn’t doing a good job. So he’s doing it every day — he’s washing, he’s cleaning.”
“He’s lovely to everyone. It was a real pleasure to live with him together,” Moshe, 30, added. “It’s a big loss for us.”
The killer ran off leaving behind three shell casings, police said.
Others in the apartment at the time were not hurt — and have not cooperated with detectives, police said.
Tindal was charged in a 1989 golf club attack in Brooklyn in which the victim spent time in a coma before dying. Records show that in 2004 Tindal was conditionally released by parole after serving eight years for an attempted murder conviction.
He had 10 arrests on his record, police said, and served additional state prison stints for assault and felony drug possession.
His best friend, who declined to give her name, said Tindal was a father of four who lived with his wife and two younger children. Tindal had turned his life around after his stint behind bars.
“I met him after he came home [from prison]. And from what I heard, he came back different. [He would say], ‘I ain’t going back there, I’m going to do
things right,’ ” said the neighbor, noting that Tindal was preparing to move out with his family in search of a quieter life in the country.
“I woke up this morning, it was like it wasn’t real. … He was the king of the building,” said the grieving woman, adding that Tindal would take extra time to keep the halls tidy, often mopping the elevator whenever something spilled and scrubbing graffiti off the building walls.
“He really tried to make the building safe because of his kids. He cleaned the building like he was a housing worker,” she said. “He was the barbecue man. Cookouts, bringing the community together, friends, family. Always doing somebody’s birthday party, always surprising somebody on their birthday. He used to do water fights. He used to go buy water guns and we handed them out and we had big water fights in the park.”
“He was just a beautiful soul, very protective over his community. … He was like a super hero,” she added.
“I want justice, and it’s gonna come. This is not going to go without consequences.”
A Brooklyn elementary school rolled out the red carpet Monday to mark the first day on the job for new schools Chancellor Meisha Porter and to celebrate her historic appointment as the first Black woman to lead the city’s public schools.
Porter was greeted by two fifth-grade docents, a glittery red banner and an original poem likening her to Kamala Harris at Public School 15 in Red Hook. She wore a colorful face mask emblazoned with the word, “Mama.”
“Welcome Madame Chancellor, Thank you for being a trailblazer,” read the poem written by fifth-graders Annabri McCloud and Maliyah Bell. “Like Kamala Harris, Mae Jemison and Maya Angelou. You inspire us to meet our goals, You challenge us to fulfill our souls.”
Porter said that a framed copy of the poem would be the first new item for her office at Tweed Courthouse.
All around Porter were signs of the unprecedented and fast-changing school year she’s
stepping into.
In one fifth-grade dual-language class conducted in Spanish and English, Porter joined five students and a teacher sitting in a semicircle facing a projector screen displaying the images of students attending class virtually from home.
One student told her classmates via Zoom in Spanish she is “a little sad I can’t be with my
class. I will be with my class again after quarantine.”
Roughly half of the school’s 400 students are attending in-person classes, the other half home full time. Porter has said she wants to “get as many families who want to be in person, in person,” but officials have not yet opened up another window for families to switch into face-toface classes.
In the meantime, educators are scrambling to engage the students in front of them. Porter got a glimpse Monday at some of the challenges. She asked one class of fifth-graders, “Who’s excited to be in school?” and got a tepid response.
The new chancellor took a softer approach with a fifth-grader looking sullen in the front row. “We’re going to get there, right?” she asked. “Probably,” the fifth-grader replied, a smile forming under the mask.
Porter’s first day came exactly a year after the hectic Sunday when city and state officials shuttered school buildings. High schools, the only buildings in the city that remain closed to in-person classes, are set to reopen March 22.
But a attendance still hasn’t bounced back, and schools in neighborhoods hit hardest by the virus have seen the biggest drops, an analysis from the Independent Budget Office found. Attendance in elementary schools in hard-hit neighborhoods dipped by 3.5% this winter compared to last winter, while it only fell by .4% in neighborhoods that felt less severe effects from the virus.