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3 People Shot Dead in Burning Harlem Building, Officials Say Man Fatally Shoots 2 and Himself at Harlem Fire Scene, Officials Say
(about 2 hours later)
Three people were fatally shot in a Harlem building on Friday, with reports of gunfire and flames complicating the response by police officers and firefighters, officials said. A Harlem man fatally shot two upstairs neighbors and then killed himself on Friday, with coinciding reports of gunfire and a building ablaze complicating the response by police officers and firefighters, officials said.
Firefighters responded to a call of a fire at the building, on West 131st Street, just before 3 p.m., officials said. Around the same time, officers responded to reports of gunfire at the same address, the police said. The victims were not publicly identified, but residents of the block where the shooting happened said the neighbors who had been killed were Hampton Smith, a retired building superintendent and local fixture, and his wife, Yvette.
A short time later, fire officials confirmed three injuries at the building, one of them fatal. Officials subsequently said that the other two injured people had died. “He’s like the mayor of the block,” Paris Benton said. “Smitty was the kindest, funniest person you could ever meet.”
All three deaths were the result of gunshot wounds to the head, officials said. It was not immediately clear whether the shootings and the fire were connected. Shortly before 3 p.m. on Friday, officers responded to reports of shots being fired at a five-story building on West 131st Street, Martine N. Materasso, a deputy police chief, said at a news conference later in the day.
By 6 p.m., investigators were still piecing together what had happened at the five-story building, on a residential block between Lenox and Fifth Avenues. Neither the identities of the victims nor the circumstances of their deaths had been publicly disclosed. Upon arriving at the building, Chief Materasso said, the officers found the body of a 78-year-old man in the first-floor hallway. He had been shot in the head, she said.
Mary Hall, who lives on the building’s first floor, was not at home when the deadly events unfolded, but she said she would have been if she had not missed her bus. The officers then heard a man who had barricaded himself in a first-floor apartment yelling, “Come and get it,” Chief Materasso said. The officers also smelled smoke coming from the apartment, she said.
“They said my neighbor Smitty and his wife are dead,” Ms. Hall, 71, a building resident for nine years, said while sitting on the stoop of a nearby brownstone. She said that Smitty and his wife, Yvette, whose full names she did not know, had lived on the second floor, that he had lived in the building for 29 years and that he was the retired superintendent. By then, firefighters were responding to reports of a fire at the building, near Lenox Avenue, officials said.
“Unbelievable,” Ms. Hall said of Smitty. “One if the nicest men I know.” When officers forced their way into the first-floor apartment, they found the body of a 59-year-old man in the bathroom with what appeared to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head, Chief Materasso said. The police recovered two firearms from the apartment.
She said she had been told that the third dead person was a man who lived across from her on the first floor. She described him as “demented” and said that he had longstanding “issues” with Smitty and his wife, at least partly over how much noise their cats made. In the course of battling the blaze and searching the building, firefighters found a 62-year-old woman in the second-floor hallway, Chief Materasso said. She, too, had been shot in the head.
Charles Diggs, who lives in a next-door building, said he was about to take a nap when he heard a “boom.” The Smiths lived on the building’s second floor, public records show.
The combination of fire and gunshots made the scene “chaotic to say the least,” Chief Materasso said.
Charles Diggs, who lives in a building next door, said he was about to take a nap on Friday afternoon when he heard a “boom” that turned out to be a gunshot.
“I thought they were doing some construction when I heard a couple of booms,” he said. “It was like boom, then boom, and then a couple of seconds and I heard another boom.”“I thought they were doing some construction when I heard a couple of booms,” he said. “It was like boom, then boom, and then a couple of seconds and I heard another boom.”
Around the same time, Mr. Diggs said, he smelled a “peculiar” smell.Around the same time, Mr. Diggs said, he smelled a “peculiar” smell.
“Then I saw the smoke,” he said, adding that it “started coming to my window fast because I live on the sixth floor.” “Then I saw the smoke,” he said.
Mary Hall, a nine-year resident of the building’s first floor, was not at home when the deadly events unfolded, but she said she would have been if she had not missed her bus. Like others on the block, she recalled Mr. Smith fondly.
“Unbelievable,” Ms. Hall, 71, said while sitting on the stoop of a nearby brownstone. She said that Mr. Smith and his wife had lived in the building for 29 years and that he was retired. “One of the nicest men I know.”
She described the man found dead in the first-floor apartment as “demented” and said that he had longstanding “issues” with the Smiths, at least partly over how much noise their two cats made.
Ronald Mitchell, a superintendent on the block, said he had known Mr. Smith for decades. He recalled his friend assisting one older woman who lived nearby when she would fall, hanging shades for neighbors and joking with local children.
“He was always helping somebody,” Mr. Mitchell said.
Like others, he described a long-running feud between Mr. Smith and a neighbor.
Tiffany McKelvy, 30, an artist and resident of the block, said that Mr. Smith had told her that he had been an artist and clothing designer in the past and had once critiqued her drawings and paintings.
Ms. Benton gestured toward a worn, brown folding chair in front of a building across the street from his own that was Mr. Smith’s regular perch.
“I can’t bear the thought of walking by this building and not seeing him there,” she said.
Alex Traub contributed reporting.