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UPDATE: Chuck, one of my network brothers over at HoopsVibe, lives at 499 Park Place. Michael L. Brea cut his mom’s head off at 501 Park Place. Here is Chuck’s story:
The basic details reported by the Post are correct, largely because they pressed the families living on the floors above and below for information. Michael Brea, the killer, hasn’t been in the neighbourhood all that much these past few months, with the general consensus on the block being that he’d moved. There certainly wasn’t any firm indication that he was on the path to losing his shit in the worst way, but given that he’d forfeited his Subway franchise in Bed-Stuy without much of an acting career to fall back on, it’s not tough to see how the guy could be in the doldrums. Whatever the case, he lost his damn mind in the early hours of this morning, and by the time he snapped out of it he’d killed his mother. I live on the third floor of 499, which means I share a wall with the murder scene on the second floor of 501. The yards to our building abut those of the row houses opposite, and that means that any sort of ruckus – be it a rowdy get-together, an indiscreet couple or a domestic dispute – echoes between the buildings. With this being a mid-gentrification neighbourhood with a fledgling hipster population, it’s not uncommon for some kind of noise to issue from some window or another at all hours of the night. That’s probably why most folks in the vicinity – and we’re talking about a few dozen apartments within earshot of the murder – simply put the screaming down to some sort of shindig or minor in-house squabble. The din first kicked up at around one in the morning, at which point I heard a woman screaming next door. That, it transpired, was Yannick, the Haitian lady I often saw buying lottery tickets in the deli on the corner, begging her son not to set on her with a three-foot sword. Most of the NYC papers reported her yelling “Help!” repeatedly, but from where I was sitting it was all one long, wordless screech. When she paused, I heard a man’s voice muffled through the wall metronomically chanting a two-syllable word or phrase. It was impossible to make out what it was from my apartment, but the family living on the third floor in 501 reported that Brea was barking “Repent!” at his mother over and over again. When the chanting faded, the screaming picked up in earnest. I heard sirens on the street in front of the building, and save for some faint moans I heard little else thereafter. In fact, I didn’t think much more of it at all. For all I knew, it was a typical domestic dispute that had flared up and died down in the course of an hour. When I stepped out to grab some food at lunchtime, I found that I had to duck under a police cordon tied to my gate. A handful of newspaper reporters leapt on me as soon as I stepped out, but backed off when they found out that the murder was news to me. I actually turned out to be useful to them a little later when they told me that the police had heard Brea yelling something incoherent about the “architect of the universe”. Evidently I was the first to draw a connection between the Masonic language and the Freemason sword, and about an hour after I mentioned the possibility to a Post reporter they redacted the story to refer to him as a “low-level Freemason”. Shortly thereafter a few minor Freemason websites ran pieces denouncing Brea’s actions and separating themselves from the dude. I’d only made the comment casually, but it must have kicked something up. Otherwise, save for a miniature media scrum that hovered in front of the building until the sword (which was confirmed as a Masonic sword and not a samurai sword as initially reported) came out, nothing much of note happened. The police shot down reports that the victim had been decapitated, but confirmed that she was found in the bathroom with multiple wounds to the head. The especially tragic part is that the cops dithered outside the door for quite a while – about forty-five minutes according the folks in 501 – before another unit showed up and finally kicked in the door. If only they’d forced entry when they showed up, there’s a chance Yannick would have pulled through. Instead, she left the building in a bag.
Yeah. TMZ reports:
An actor who appeared on “Ugly Betty” was taken into custody in Brooklyn this morning for allegedly killing his mother with a samurai sword while screaming biblical passages. According to the police, the suspect — Michael L. Brea — sliced his mother’s head off during the attack. When cops arrived to the scene around 2:20 AM, officers had to use a taser to subdue the actor. Brea was taken to a nearby hospital with a police escort. Police claim the scene was “extremely bloody.” A neighbor told WPIX 11, “I hear the brother chasing her [his mother] through the house and he’s just saying a bunch of [Bible] passages like, ‘Repent, Repent, Repent.'” The neighbor continued, “I heard him chasing her through the house and I hear a loud scream and so I have my father call the cops, call 911.” Brea has not been formally arrested or charged yet.
They lace blunts with the rage virus now? I think it’s safe to say that homeboy was on some of that other shit.
