Tenant: Despite bangs, no reason to think your neighbor is being killed

The Bronx building where ex-con Collin Small’s butchered body was found is not quiet, so a sixth-floor neighbor didn’t think anything of it when she heard four bangs outside her apartment around 1 a.m. Tuesday.

“When you hear gunshots like that, you don’t really think your neighbor’s being murdered,” said Small’s neighbor, who gave her name as Samantha. “You’re just kind of like, ‘What the hell was that noise?’ ”

Officers went to Small’s apartment on Summit Ave. near W. 162nd St. in Highbridge hours later, at around 11:30 a.m., when the building’s super requested a wellness check.

Inside, they found Small’s torso and one of his feet in a blue plastic bin, while his bullet-riddled head was found stuffed inside a freezer beside his severed limbs and the other foot, cops said.

Also inside the apartment was Sheldon Johnson Jr. — an ex-con turned criminal rights advocate for Queens Defenders and a recent guest on Joe Rogan’s hit podcast — who sources say brought cleaning supplies and a Tyvek suit to Small’s apartment.

“It was like he had watched all the movies about serial killers who cut up bodies,” said a law enforcement source.

Johnson Jr., 48, was charged in Bronx Criminal Court with murder, manslaughter, weapon possession and concealment of a corpse.

Samantha said that neither she nor her neighbors assumed that the bangs from down the hall — which she described as two pops, a pause and then two more pops — were gunfire.

“Everyone’s kind of saying, ‘Why didn’t they call the police?’ No one on the floor thought that’s what was happening,” Samantha said. “It was just loud bangs.”

When the gunshots sounded from Small’s apartment around 1 a.m., Samantha said, she cracked open her door and peered down the hall. Seeing nothing amiss, she quickly went back inside.

“I’m like, ‘Dogs are good, neighbors are good, everyone’s quiet.’ I’m bugging out.”

Besides, she noted, the building can be noisy — it sits next to the Major Deegan Expressway, and neighbors say the elevator makes grinding noises.

Later that morning, another neighbor phoned Samantha and said she’d heard someone from inside Small’s apartment begging for his life.

Samantha said she was concerned by the neighbor’s report that “they heard someone saying, ‘I have a family,’ or something to that effect.”

She said that statement led her neighbor to think “something doesn’t feel right,” and that she and the neighbor decided to approach the building’s super, Orlando Medina.

Samantha said that even if she had called police the moment she heard gunfire, she doesn’t believe Small (photo) would have lived to thank her.

“He was already passed once those gunshots went off,” Samantha said. “There was not a sound or a peep.”

Small had twice been convicted of felony assault and was paroled in Oct. 2018 after serving nearly 10 years in state prison.

Samantha remembered her slain neighbor as kind and unassuming and said she hopes he isn’t judged based solely on his criminal past.

“Nobody is talking about that my sweet neighbor was murdered,” said Samantha as she wiped tears from her eyes. “And that’s the most heartbreaking thing for me. Because you can have whatever past you have and still be a good person.”

Samantha recalled her last encounter with Small inside their building’s elevator two weeks prior to his murder, where he playfully introduced himself to her mother.

“I’m on the phone with my mom and then he kinda puts his head in the camera and he’s like, ‘Hey ma, how you doing?’ and she’s like, ‘Hey hon I’m good. How are you?’

“That’s the kind of person he was.”