Nightmare Tenant Terrifying Neighbors In Brooklyn Apartment With Bizarre, Menacing Behavior
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) – Neighbors in one Brooklyn building are terrified, after they say a nightmare neighbor won't leave them alone.
Disturbing cell phone, captured video through a peep hole, caught a tenant in the co-op building repeatedly knocking on his neighbor's doors in his underwear late at night.
Weeks later - fully dressed this time – he continuously knocked on another neighbor's door while holding what appears to be a knife in his hand.
"I have to kind of open the door, look both ways and make sure there's not some maniac standing there with God knows what in his hands," tenant Mike Cullen said.
Cullen says it's part of a disturbing pattern of behavior that has been happening at his building on 71st Street in Bay Ridge for months on end.
The neighbor in the video, identified as Alexander Makarovsky, has allegedly continued acting brazenly, bizarrely, and menacingly.
Cullen says shortly after knocking on another neighbor's door with a knife back in January, Makarovsky was arrested by police.
Neighbors told CBS2's Scott Rapoport he was soon released and the incident has left them frightened.
"He is a menace to the entire building. He is coming up and down our fire escape. He's tapping on my window. I witnessed this firsthand," Melissa Gentile said.
Some neighbors on the floor told CBS2 they have obtained orders of protection to keep Makarovsky away from them. The building has been trying to have Makarovsky evicted as well.
The owner of the apartment Makarovsky lives in, Frank Dlugosz, told CBS2 over the phone that he has tried to give his tenant the boot, but getting an eviction has been tough. The last hearing Dlugosz attended was adjourned.
"Evictions take time and they are difficult," Larry Jason said.
The tenants' rights expert says, in this case, it is the responsibility the owner of the apartment unit to evict Makarovsky because the tenant is subletting from him.
Jason added that if the situation drags on, others who live in the building should band together as a group and have the property management company get involved.
"The more people who complain about it the better off the tenants are and the more likely they are to get it resolved."
CBS2 tried to talk to the man in the video; Makarovsky did not answer the door.
The menacing tenant is scheduled to appear at a hearing in housing court Wednesday, at which time action could finally be taken against him.
