Great guy and great neighbor

He had a cult-like following thanks to his breakout role as a hit man on “The Wire. But to residents of the Brooklyn building where actor Michael K. Williams lived, he was just another neighbor.

“He was so special, always said hello, always smiling, hugs,” said Connie Agapie, 65, the concierge of the Williamsburg building where Williams was found dead Monday in his luxury penthouse apartment from what officials suspect was a drug overdose.

“Even my granddaughter, she was turning 1, and he promised to come to the baptism. He would show me pictures of his family and I would show him pictures of mine. We were very close. He would never cross this lobby without saying hello.”

“I really do believe he was going to come to my granddaughter’s baptism,” Agapie said. “He was very kind, always. A beautiful face, sunny from within and it came out.”

To much of the world Williams, 54, was Omar, the hard-core stick-up specialist who robbed drug dealers every week on one of HBO’s signature shows. But to the residents he passed in the hallway and rode with on the elevator, the Emmy-award winner was simply “Mike.”

Oh, sure, some of them wanted to trade lines with him from the show — “You come at the king, you best not miss” — and Williams would oblige.

But just as often, he talked with neighbors about bike riding and his love of music.

“I remember the first time we met in the elevator,” said Lavi Rudnick, who met Williams in November 2020, when Rudnick was with his wife and dog. “I didn’t want to be a jerk or anything because he was a famous person. But he got on his knees and started playing with our dog. Her name is Molly, and he said, ‘Good golly, miss Molly.’ Now my wife always says that.

“That was the first time we met, but after that he always called me by my first name. It’s a loss for the movie and TV industry, but it’s also a loss for the whole community.”

Tommy Scheahr, 31, was one of the neighbors who dropped the occasional line from “The Wire.” But Williams eventually saw that Scheahr shared his bicycle passion, and they exchanged numbers and made plans to go riding one day.

Scheahr said he was skeptical, and thought Williams might have given him a fake number, until he got a text from the actor Saturday. Scheahr was out of town for the holiday weekend. He tried to hit Williams back on Monday. But he was too late.