A notoriously racist tenant suspected of setting a fatal fire in the same building where Brooklyn tenants say they've been terrorized under his watch for more than a year has been arrested.
Steven Attanasso is facing new felony hate crime and weapon charges in connection to a string of incidents at the Ebbets Field Apartments where, for so long, the investigation into his actions had been stalled.
Police arrested the 67-year-old Crown Heights man Thursday night on a hate crime charge of making terroristic threats against his Black neighbors, according to a high-ranking NYPD source. But Attanasso has been arrested and set free repeatedly in the past, even after he was suspected of setting a fatal fire in the apartment building.
His neighbors want to know if this time he will remain behind bars. Many say the blood curdling screams caught on camera at all hours of the night were the least of the harassment they experienced.
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"We just want him to go. However he goes," Beverly Newsome, a tenants association president, said.
For more than a year, neighbors have been documenting Attanasso waving knives around the hall, slamming their doors with a hammer and spewing racial slurs.
"He’ll scream ‘Ahhh, f--- you n-----s, I’m gonna kill you,’” said a neighbor named Raquel.
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A year of calls to 911 about Attanasso's alleged threats and violent behavior produced no long-term relief for the Crown Heights tenants, despite some arrests and trips to a psychiatric hospital. Each time, Attanasso was released.
His neighbors were shocked in April when nothing changed after Attanasso, they said, threatened to burn his Black neighbors.
"Black people, we're gonna burn you. Right now you're really brown, when we get done with you you'll be black," he was caught saying on tape.
Three days later, a suspicious fire was set in the hallway that killed 66-year-old veteran Roderick Coley. The NYPD has said Attanasso is their only suspect in the fatal arson investigation, but no charged were filed until well after the first I-Team report.
When police officers went to arrest the 67-year-old man, he was carrying a long kitchen knife on the street, the source told News 4. Attanasso already faces other weapons charges, but has repeatedly failed to show up to court hearing.
Neighbors who have been living in hear say there never seem to be any consequences.
"I'm not holding my breath because is this gonna be like it was the last time, he went in for a couple hours and then comes back out?" Beverly asked.
The building's tenants say there are frustrated that the more serious fatal arson investigation remains stalled.
Law enforcement sources say the charges Attanasso faces are serious and could result in jail time if he is convicted. They say he is unlikely to be held on bail. A spokesperson for the Legal Aid Society, which was assigned to represent Attanasso, declined to comment.
