A 60-year-old man fatally shot on Brooklyn’s notorious Penn Track strip known for brazen prostitution was a registered sex offender convicted nearly three decades ago of forcing a 12-year-old girl into sex work, the Daily News has learned.
Anthony Haughton was convicted in Manhattan in 1997 of promoting prostitution, public records show. The victim was just 12. Nearly 20 years later, in 2016, he began his most recent of five prison stints, for another promoting prostitution conviction along with a drug sale charge.
He was released on parole in 2020.
Haughton was murdered in a desolate industrial strip near Pennsylvania Ave. known as the Penn Track, which is notorious for out-in-the-open prostitution.
Neighbors on the Brownsville block where he lived were surprised to hear he was killed.
“He’s in and out,” said one woman who declined to give her name. “When I say he don’t bother with nobody, I mean nobody.”
Haughton was shot in the torso near Georgia and Wortman Aves. about 4:25 a.m. Sunday. Witnesses told cops they heard a shot, saw Haughton on the ground and spotted a gray Dodge Charger speeding away, according to police sources.
Medics rushed Haughton to Brookdale University Hospital but he couldn’t be saved. His killer has not been caught and police have not released a motive.
She said the victim had been living in the building for about two years.
First incarcerated in 1981 for a Brooklyn robbery, Haughton again served time for a Brooklyn robbery and criminal possession of a weapon conviction in 1984 under an alias, Michael Horton, public records show.
He went on to serve three more stints in prison under his real name for selling drugs and promotion of prostitution, including the case with the 12-year-old, for which he served nearly nine years.
Despite his damning record another neighbor said Haughton was “a good guy”.
“Always respectable. Always had a nice cool walk,” said Ty, 53.
Haughton was picked up in Brooklyn in April for driving without a license and possession of a forged instrument. He was last arrested May 7, also in Brooklyn, and charged with driving without a license, driving across a sidewalk, criminal possession of stolen property and reckless endangerment, among other charges.
Haughton was due back in Brooklyn Criminal Court in June, two days before he would have turned 61.
