AGONIZING MYSTERY
Family looks for answers after man found dead in Brooklyn
When a 38-year-old Brooklyn man was found dead in his apartment Thursday with bruises on his neck and blood on his lip, his shocked family immediately asked what happened.
Days later, they are wondering the same thing, unsatisfied with the inconclusive results of an autopsy, and have started an online fundraiser to pay for an independent postmortem.
“I just want justice for him, he can’t talk for himself,” Chemere John, victim Phill Cayenne’s sister, said through tears. “He was just so sweet. I just want to know what happened to him, and I’m not ever going to let up. He can’t tell me what happened.”
Cayenne, who had high-functioning autism, was discovered on the couch in his Bath Beach home on Bay 29th St. near Bath Ave. by his case manager about 2:50 p.m., according to police.
The victim, who went by his middle name Staron, lived with a roommate he’d known since he was 18, family said. The men lived together in a group home 20 years ago, and aside from five years Cayenne lived with another sister during his 20s, had been roommates since.
According to News 12, the roommate was taken into custody after Cayenne’s body was found, but he has not been charged.
“[The detective] said the guy was just talking in circles, he doesn’t make sense,” said John, 43. “They said that they’re waiting for extra evidence from the autopsy.”
Cayenne, who moved with his family from Trinidad and Tobago to Queens when he was 11, was mild-mannered and relaxed, said his sisters, which makes his apparently violent end especially puzzling.
“My brother was calm and cool, he didn’t bother anyone. He was just in his own world,” said John. “My brother is sweet and loving, he’s not a fighter. It just doesn’t make sense.”
“Calm, chill, charismatic, loved to sing, loved to dance,” said Cayenne’s oldest sister Natasha John, 50. “He was our baby brother, our only brother.”
Cayenne loved to perform and listen to rap and soca, had an outgoing personality and adored his three nieces, according to family. Despite his diagnosis, Cayenne was independent, they said.
“He come and he go as he please,” Chemere John remembered. “I wouldn’t see him for a couple of months and I would say, ‘Are you OK?’ He’d say, ‘I’m always OK.’ ”
Still, the sisters would help whenever he needed money or clothing, taking turns caring for him and still treating him like their beloved baby brother. Thursday’s tragic news hit them hard. “I was in Atlanta when I got the news, I took my daughter to celebrate her 16th birthday. They called me when I was at an aquarium and I just lost it,” said Chemere John.
“The case manager found him. He came in and saw him on the couch leaned over with marks on his neck and blood coming out of his mouth,” she continued. “He said he was cold when he got there, so I’m thinking he was dead long before he found him.”
“The phone just kept blowing up — I’m getting calls from both sisters, I’m getting calls from my aunt. I called Chemere and she was just screaming, she just screamed out ‘Staron’s dead,’ ” said Natasha John.
Now the rest of the family is plagued by unanswered questions, desperate to know how Cayenne came to be found dead on his couch.
“What happened? Who did this? Is it one person, multiple persons?” said Natasha John.
“We know he is not the type of person to initiate anything, he’s not the fiery type,” she added. “He was just a sweet young man. He would be the one to defuse a situation.”
Chemere John seconded the concern. “We don’t want to get the funeral going and we don’t know what happened,” she said. “I can’t even sleep good at night, I can’t stop thinking about him.”