The Brooklyn building super who was beaten with a cellphone and later died of an apparent heart attack wrapped his arms around the attacker to try to hold him for police for making threats before the fatal clash occurred, an eyewitness told the Daily News Thursday.
The 31-year-old suspect remained in police custody Thursday but has not been charged as cops await autopsy results to see if the super’s death was caused by the clash.
The suspect had blocked the door to the apartment building on Ocean Ave. near Glenwood Road in Flatbush with an electric stand-up scooter and the super objected, the witness said.
He refused to leave the lobby and was recorded repeatedly threatening the super in front of the super’s wife and child, according to witnesses and video shared with The News.
That led Havolli, 41, to try and detain the suspect, who claimed he entered the building to visit a family member, for cops, tenants said.
The suspect remained in police custody without charges Thursday as police await the results of an autopsy to see if Havolli’s death was caused by the blows to the head, officials said. Havolli declined medical attention and returned to his family’s apartment, where he collapsed while taking a shower.
Havolli had just come into the building with his wife and 2-year-old son in a stroller when he saw the suspect blocking the door with the scooter, sparking an argument, the eyewitness told the News.
The argument was also fueled by speculation the suspect may have entered the building to steal packages, residents said. The building has been plagued by package thieves in recent months, according to tenants.
Video shared with The News showed Havolli confronting the scooter rider, who had been let into the lobby by another tenant’s child, over the blocked door.
“The super, he consistently encouraged him to move the scooter out of the way,” said the witness, who wished not to be named. “(The suspect) was threatening the super, ‘If you touch my scooter, you know, go ahead, I dare you, I dare you.’”
When Havolli asked him to leave the building, the man, sporting a hoodie, sweatpants and a long winter coat, began screaming at the super, cellphone video obtained by The News shows.
“Stop steppin’ to me,” the suspect yelled at Havolli, who remained calm through the recorded exchange. “Who the f— you talkin’ to? F— you!”
The suspect, who is Black, called Havolli a racist for wanting him to leave the building.
“I’m American!” the man screamed. “You’re a loser! You f—-ing Russian!”
Havolli, who came to the U.S. from Kosovo in 1999 at the tail end of the Serbian-Kosovo war, informed the scooter rider he wasn’t Russian, prompting another expiative-laden tirade.
Havolli’s wife tried to get the suspect to stop yelling but he immediately shut her down, the video shows.
“Please do not speak to me!” he screamed as he tried to justify being in the lobby.
In a second video taken during the clash, the suspect realizes the woman with Havolli is his wife.
“That’s the man you married? A liar?” the suspect said. “When he kill you, they’ll never know if he killed you or not, he’s such a liar.”
“The super was not being violent towards him,” the witness said. “But the kid, you know, he’s trying to mark his ground. He was cursing at him, telling the super, ‘You’re not the boss, you’re just the guy that cleans. If I catch you outside I’m going to punch you in the head. Where I come from, people kill people like you.’”
Havolli called 911 but the suspect continued his tirade, the witness said.
“That’s when the super felt threatened, him and his family,” the witness said. “(The kid) said, ‘I would bash your head. I will find you outside.’”
After going back and forth for several more minutes, the suspect grabbed his scooter to leave but Havolli grabbed him and tried to hold him for the cops, the witness said.
“‘You’re not going nowhere, because my life has been threatened,” Havolli told the suspect, according to the witness. “‘We’re waiting for the cops.’”
“That’s when everything started, struggling back and forth, fighting,” the witness said. “(Havolli’s) wife was hysterical. I didn’t know what to do. It was fist fighting. The super never threw a punch at the kid. I don’t know why he didn’t defend himself. He was just holding him.”
The suspect repeatedly bashed Havolli over the head with a cell phone, witnesses told police. A sanitation worker came over and helped subdue the suspect as police arrived, the witness said.
“Benny tried to hold him until the police come,” building porter Johnny Garcia told The News Monday. “It started in the lobby and they fight. It ended up outside the building.”
Cops ultimately arrived and took the suspect into custody.
Havolli refused to be seen by EMS at the scene, the witness said.
“I (asked him), ‘Are you okay?’” the witness recalled. “He said, ‘I’m fine. Just, you know, feel bruised’ and stuff like that. He was talking to me just like I’m talking to you. He thought he was fine.”
A short time later, while taking a shower in his apartment upstairs, Havolli had an apparent heart attack and then died at Kings County Hospital.
“Over nothing,” the witness said, still visibly distraught Thursday. “He was trying to keep the building safe. Just doing his job.”
“He should have let (the suspect) go,” the witness added.
The city Medical Examiner had slated an autopsy to determine what caused Burim’s death as cops and prosecutors weigh possible charges against the suspect.
“He was very helpful to a lot of people,” the victim’s brother Qendrim Havolli said of the victim. “He helped people who came in for the first time in this country. He opened the door, helped them get clothes, a job. He never left anybody in the street.”
“That’s why the tenants love him, because he opened the door, no matter what color you are,” he added. “He was just a sweetheart human being.”
Burim was 14 when his family escaped the atrocities in the Serbian-Kosovo war.
“We saw dead bodies in the streets. They were trying to kill us,” Qendrim recalled. “(My brother) came to this country fleeing death and this is where he was killed.”
A sign alerting residents to package thieves was plastered throughout the building, noting the crooks usually come late at night and try to gain access to the building by ringing door bells of every resident, claiming they lost their keys.
As of Wednesday, building tenants had called the city’s 911 system 65 times, but only two of them were for past or in-progress larcenies like package thefts, an NYPD spokesman said.