Police are looking at a possible link between yesterday’s deadly shooting at a public housing construction site and a NYCHA kickback scheme that KCP exclusively reported on last year.
On Monday, Feb. 4, at approximately 11:42 a.m., a male shooter riddled off shots that hit two construction workers, killing one and seriously injuring the other after a heated dispute near a construction site at the Gravesend Houses located at 3320 Mermaid Avenue.
According to police, 53-year-old female, Dorothy Dixon, was taken to Coney Island Hospital with a gunshot wound to her torso where she later was pronounced dead. The second worker, a 47-year-old male, suffered a gunshot wound to his left leg and was taken to Lutheran Hospital in serious but stable condition.
“The NYPD internally believes the shooting involves construction companies and nefarious characters known on the street as ‘the coalition,'” said a source with knowledge of the investigation.
The fatal shooting, according to two sources, could very well have been the result of a dispute between public housing individuals looking to get employed and a contractor who promised them jobs. Apparently, the contractor failed to get employment for local residents who then confronted the man on Monday which then led to the deadly shooting.
Dixon is said to have attempted to disperse the argument when she took the fatal bullet.
“Dixon, she was just trying to stop the argument about jobs. She was an innocent bystander, a peacemaker. Everyone loved her,” said a source. “There is a private company coming to do work here, who does all of the hiring and managing of construction sites. This was not random, there are definitely issues with the Sandy NYCHA jobs, it has been an issue.”
As earlier reported by KCP, a possible kickback scheme involving NYCHA tenant association presidents placing tenants into NYCHA jobs to repair Superstorm Sandy damage at prevailing construction wages for a weekly “donation” might be at the core of the incident.
The ongoing KCP investigation has found that the alleged kickback scheme dates back in part from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) handing $3 billion to NYCHA in March 2015 to fix and replace boilers, heating systems and other infrastructure breakage due to Superstorm Sandy.
A large recipient of this money were the nine NYCHA developments in Coney Island that suffered extensive damage from the near hurricane.
A major stipulation of this funding is HUD’s Section 3 mandate that requires employment and other economic opportunities generated by federal assistance to public housing authorities to be directed, whenever possible, to public housing residents and other low and very low-income residents.
An initial report, claims that even the NYPD Chief of Detectives doesn’t think the shooting was random, and the gunman knew the person he intended to target.
It is not known if Dixon is a public housing resident and no arrests have been made as of publication time.
