UNWELCOME & KNIFED
Squatter in bro-in-law’s Harlem apt. declared dead at scene
A 74-year-old man fatally stabbed in a Harlem apartment on Friday squatted there for nine years without sharing the household’s expenses, said the dead man’s brother-in-law and the apartment’s leaseholder.
“I’ve been trying to get him out for years,” said Vernon Terry.
Police responding a 911 call found the victim unconscious and suffering from a stab wound inside the sixth-floor apartment on W. 151st St near Broadway at 5:49 a.m., cops said.
Police said they have a “person of interest” in custody in the slaying. That person’s name had not been released as of Friday evening.
Terry described the victim — his late wife’s brother — as an unwelcome roommate, who refused to vacate the apartment where he ultimately died.
The victim, whose name has not been released by police, did not chip in for rent and utilities and refused to clean up after himself, Terry said.
Terry added that he and his brotherin-law nearly came to blows last summer over the state of the apartment’s bathroom.
“I said, ‘All regards, all respect I have for you is done.’ I haven’t spoken to him since.”
Terry said he came home one day to find that his brother-in-law had tossed his sofa and loveseat to the curb to make way for a bed in the apartment’s living room, which the victim claimed as his de facto bedroom.
“My sofa was gone, and he had a bed there,” said Terry. “I asked him on a few occasions — I told him, ‘I need my space.’ He told me he’s not moving, and he’s gonna leave when he feels like.”
Terry described his brother-in-law as a layabout gambler, saying his chief pursuit was trying to strike it rich by playing lotteries.
“He doesn’t work,” said Terry. “He plays numbers during the day.”
Police said they had visited the apartment for disturbances three times, answering two calls made by the victim and one by the person of interest in the slaying.
The super at the W. 151st St. building said he was fed up with the trouble and police visits generated by the strife in the sixth-floor apartment.
Other tenants in the building complained, said the super, who asked that his name be withheld. “Constant fighting,” the super said. “They almost killed each other last time ... and nothing was done.”
Video footage taken at the apartment shows the final minutes of the 74-year-old man’s life as he succumbed to the knife wound.
“I don’t think he’s breathing, guys,” a man in the apartment can be heard screaming to a 911 operator as the 74-year-old man lay dying. “Please!”
An unidentified woman applied pressure to a wound beneath the victim’s left shoulder before paramedics arrived and attempted to resuscitate the man as he lay unconscious in the apartment’s living room.
“When we got here he had a pulse and he was breathing. He’s not breathing anymore,” one medic can be heard saying in the video as rescuers perform CPR.
The victim was pronounced dead at the scene, police confirmed.
JERUSALEM — A member of Israel’s War Cabinet cast doubt on the country’s strategy for releasing hostages held by Hamas, saying only a cease-fire can free them, as the prime minister rejected the United States’ calls to scale back its offensive.
The comments by Gadi Eisenkot, a former army chief, marked the latest sign of disagreement among top Israeli officials over the direction of the war against Hamas, now in its fourth month.
In his first public statements on the course of the war, Eisenkot said claims that the dozens of hostages could be freed by means other than a cease-fire amounted to spreading “illusions” — an implicit criticism of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who heads the five-member War Cabinet and insists that pursuing the war will win their release.
Eisenkot’s statements came as some relatives of hostages have intensified their protests, a sign of mounting frustration over the government’s seeming lack of progress toward a deal to release the remaining captives.
Meanwhile, communications began to gradually return in Gaza after a nearly eight-day blackout, the longest such cutoff since the war began. The phone and internet blackout made it nearly impossible for people in Gaza to communicate with the outside world or within the territory, hampering deliveries of humanitarian aid and rescue efforts amid continued Israeli bombardment.
The blackout also made it difficult for information to get out of Gaza on the daily death and destruction from Israel’s offensive. The assault has pulverized much of the Gaza Strip, home to about 2.3 million people, as Israel vows to crush Hamas after its unprecedented Oct. 7 raid into Israel. In the attack, about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, were killed and 250 people were taken hostage. Israel has said more than 130 hostages remain in Gaza, but not all of them are believed to be alive.
Israel’s offensive, one of the deadliest and most destructive military campaigns in recent history, has killed nearly 25,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza health authorities, and uprooted more than 80% of the territory’s population.
The United States, Israel’s closest ally, has provided strong military and political support for the campaign but has increasingly called on Israel to scale back its assault and take steps toward establishing a Palestinian state after the war — a suggestion Netanyahu has soundly rejected.
Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant have said the fighting will continue until Hamas is crushed and argue that only military action can win the hostages’ release.
Speaking to Israel’s Channel 12 television, Eisenkot, whose son was killed in December while fighting in Gaza, said the hostages “will only return alive if there is a deal, linked to a significant pause in fighting.” He said dramatic rescue operations are unlikely because the hostages are apparently spread out, many of them in underground tunnels.