NYPD describes ‘horrific’ killings

Man allegedly shot girlfriend, two others on daughter’s 9th birthday

A murderous Brooklyn ex-con turned his 9-year-old daughter’s birthday into a bloodbath.

Joseph Mccrimins, armed with two guns, wordlessly executed his girlfriend and her two daughters inside their Brooklyn apartment — with the sobbing birthday girl cowering in a closet as she dialed 911, police and a neighbor said Tuesday.

“It’s horrific,” said NYPD Chief of Detectives James Essig, who viewed body camera footage of the arriving officers finding the distraught child. “Saying, ‘Daddy was coming over for my birthday and he shot them.’ She was weeping and crying and (said she) didn’t have presents.

“It was heartbreaking to hear that.”

Mccrimons, 46, was found dead two blocks away from a self-inflected gunshot wound after opening fire Monday night inside the Van Dyke Houses, killing girlfriend Rasheeda Barzey and her daughters. A Brownsville neighbor said there was no indication of the coming carnage until the shooting started about 11:20 p.m.

“There was no words, no argument,” said the neighbor, who lives one floor below the fourth-floor apartment where the killings occurred. “It was just ‘Pop! Pop! Pop!’ After the first two pops she started wailing. And then there were three more.”

The shooter’s young daughter ducked into the closet as the bullets flew and survived to call for help, police said. It was unclear what sparked the couple’s final argument, but the neighbor recounted prior disturbing incidents from the apartment and police confirmed the pair shared a long, tumultuous relationship.

“I’ve always heard them arguing and screaming, yelling at the kids sometimes,” the neighbor added. “There’s a lot of violence ... Banging walls, screaming. You hear him beating her, throwing her.”

Her son recounted similar episodes in the upstairs apartment where the family moved in about three years ago.

“It would usually sound like discipline,” he said. “Until last night.”

Police arrived at the Sutter Avenue apartment to find Barzey, 45, sprawled dead on the floor with the bodies of daughters Solei Spears, 20, and Chloe Spears, 16.

The killing spree took four minutes, a police source said building surveillance showed.

Barzey was a doting and protective mother, but she grew distant from her family after she started dating Mccrimon, said her step-brother, Hasley Derosena, 45.

“He definitely had a part in it. I was worried,” Derosena said. “She was very loyal, to whoever she was with. She was devoted.”

He described Mccrimon as too quiet and mostly unreadable. “She didn’t start acting weird until she had a boyfriend,” he said.

Barzey’s brother-in-law recalled her fondly Tuesday as her family mourned their loss.

“She was very energetic, extremely charismatic,” said Will Ebanks, who is married to the victim’s sister. “Strong-willed. A loving mother, loving sister, loving daughter, loving friend.”

The grandmother of the slain sisters wept hysterically after learning of their cold-blooded slayings.

“I love my grandchildren so much,” said a sobbing Mary Spears, 70, whose son was divorced from Barzey. “I really can’t talk right now. She was a good mother. That’s all I can say. A good mother.”

NYPD Community Affairs officers delivered birthday balloons and donuts Tuesday to the 9-year-old, who was staying with relatives.

Cops said the couple shared a contentious relationship of two decades, although there was no history of documented domestic violence incidents. But court documents detailed Mccrimon’s criminal past, dating back to a fatal Halloween homicide when he was a teen.

Mccrimon was arrested in 1993 for gunning down a man who had just taken his younger relatives trick or treating. The victim was trying to break up a street fight between his teen nephew and another youth, with Mccrimon — angered by the would-be peacemaker’s efforts — shooting the other man in the back.

The gunman, just 18 at the time of the shooting, spent eight years in prison after a 1995 manslaughter conviction. He later did time for a 2013 bank robbery that ended with his Westchester County arrest after a high-speed car chase, according to court documents.

A former Queens neighbor offered similar recollections of Mccrimon as a loner who fought constantly with the woman who shared his apartment back seven years ago.

Mccrimon’s young daughter, rattled but unharmed physically, was still inside the apartment when police arrived Monday night, said NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea. She repeated her horrifying account of the rampage to the arriving police officers, with her words captured on their body cameras.

As cops arrived at the apartment, a second 911 call steered police to a scene two blocks away. Officers found Mccrimon, of Mount Vernon, dead from a gunshot wound to his head in a walkway outside another Van Dyke Houses building, with a .38-caliber handgun nearby.

The killer was carrying a second weapon and his suicide was caught on video, Shea said.