For those planning to angrily confront their roommate for drinking all their beer or leaving a pile of spaghetti sauce–crusted dishes in the sink: It could always be much, much worse. Saturday’s New York Post has the “exclusive” story of the catastrophic end of 47-year-old José Santiago and 45-year-old Brenda Alvarez’s time as roommates in Flatbush. The paper reports Alvarez had decided to move out of their shared Nostrand Avenue apartment because of “growing tension” between the two. But, when Santiago saw Alvarez packing her bags, he “went crazy” and killed her two fish, Bonnie and Clyde.
“He flushed one down the toilet, then put another in a bag and tied it,” said Alvarez. “I did everything for him, and the only thing I ever asked him to do was the laundry. So, why did he do this to me?” Santiago (who also “roughed up” Alvarez before turning on her pets) has been charged with animal cruelty and assault. Luckily, his former roommate still has her Jack Russell terrier, Ice, but a friend said she remains “haunted” by the empty aquarium.
Another living situation came to an even more upsetting end on Friday night in Carroll Gardens, where a 29-year-old man stabbed his 53-year-old roommate in the shoulder in their Court Street apartment. Police called to the scene say that “when they approached the suspect on the sidewalk, he refused to drop the knife and lunged at the officers,” who responded by shooting him several times. The man was pronounced dead at Lutheran Hospital, making him the second person to be fatally shot by the NYPD in the last two weeks.
