By The newspaper
Reginald Newkirk, a 51-year-old ex-convict, was arrested yesterday on suspicion of dragging a woman’s body out of his Brooklyn (NYC) apartment and dumping it in the building’s hallway.
Newkirk now faces charges including concealing a dead body and tampering with evidence stemming from the dramatic incident at the Park Manor apartment building on Rockaway Parkway near Rutland Road in East Flatbush early Tuesday morning.
“It was crazy to see that.”
In that same building, another body was found in January of last year, one floor below this week’s discovery. The January 2023 victim was identified as Jermaine Desaussure, he recalled DailyNews. He was dead for hours before being found curled up on the floor of his apartment with five gunshot wounds to the chest. Whoever shot him forced entry and ransacked the home. No arrests have been made in that case.
Now, in an unlinked case, Newkirk told police the woman suffered a fatal overdose. The body had no apparent trauma and the city medical examiner (OCME) must perform an autopsy to determine how she died. She was about 30 years old and did not have identification.
Police and medics were called to the building around 7 a.m. Tuesday for a report of a gas smell and upon arrival found the woman’s body lying face up in the 2nd floor hallway.
“I saw the body when the FDNY knocked on my door… It was right there in the hallway near the staircase,” said a 2nd floor resident who did not want to be identified. “It was crazy to see that.”
Police arrested Newkirk in the early hours of yesterday after recovering surveillance video that showed him dragging the body out of his apartment about two hours before it was discovered. He left her body by the stairs and returned to his apartment, where he remained until the police arrived.
Newkirk served two stints behind bars, each for less than a year, following an assault conviction in June 2015 and another for weapons possession in August 2021. He was last released from prison in April 2022 and served on parole until January of last year, state records show.
This year several bodies have been found in buildings in New York: this month three men were found dead under mysterious circumstances in a residential basement in Queens.
In January, a decomposing woman was found stuffed in the trash inside a home in The Bronx (NYC). Days later, the body of a sex convict was found dismembered in the refrigerator of an apartment in Brooklyn (NYC). Then a prisoner in Virginia confessed to having committed the crime in 2022, in a fight over drugs while the victim was sleeping as a guest on the couch.
In July 2023, three housemates were accused of throwing a woman’s body into a plastic container near an MTA yard in the Bronx. Apparently they were using drugs and she overdosed.
In November 2022, the body of actor Frank Vallelonga Jr. was thrown from a car onto a street in the Bronx. An autopsy later determined that he had died of an accidental overdose of fentanyl and cocaine.
I looked for help
- Call 911, 988 or (800)-942-6906.
- Text “WELL” to 65173.
- Review information at https://nycwell.cityofnewyork.us/es/ and www.988lineadevida.org