A man who was shot and killed in a Brooklyn basement early Sunday went through a harrowing ordeal just a few months ago when he and his wife had to rescue their six small children from a fire allegedly started by their landlord to get them out of his building.
Lavel “Flip” Frasier, 40, was shot in the torso on Sterling Place near Franklin Ave. in Crown Heights around 1 a.m., according to police. Medics rushed him to Kings County Hospital, but he could not be saved.
The slaying mystified those who knew Frasier as a humble family man.
“Very beautiful, a good spirit” said a cousin, Christine Moody. “Very loving. That’s why I can’t believe this, he keeps to himself.”
A friend said the killing left him in “disbelief.”
“You know people and you’ll be like, nah, that can’t happen to them?” said the fiend, who only wanted to be identified as Blanco. “I came to this and I couldn’t believe it.”
In September, Frasier and his wife Andriana Edwards flew into action when they discovered their Cypress Hills building was burning — a fire that investigators later blamed on landlord Rafiqul Islam, who has been charged with murder and arson and remains jailed on Rikers Island.
FDNY
Landlord Rafiqul Islam.
The blaze was the culmination of months of harassment of the family by Islam after the landlord stopped receiving rent subsidies through the CityFHEPS program following a failed inspection, Edwards previously said. After-midnight doorknocks from Islam to demand rent, a dead cat left in the hallway and even threats by the irate landlord to burn the building preceded the Sept. 26 fire.
On the day of the blaze, Frasier and Edwards were awakened by the smell of smoke.
“My spouse [was] like, ‘Come back in the room because it smells like something’s burning,’” Edwards told the Daily News in November. “Then he opened up the door and smoke is already entering the house.”
“I just had to think quick,” said Edwards, recounting the terrifying scene at the burning apartment building on Forbell St. near Glenmore Ave. “Either we get caught in the fire or miss (our) chances … I’m just shaking them, telling them, ‘Come on, we’ve got to go. It’s an emergency.’”
The couple smashed a window, made their way to the roof and tossed their terrified children one by one to good Samaritans 20 feet below. The kids, ages 2 through 8, were still shaken months later.
In October, Islam was arrested after fire marshals found a damning surveillance footage clip of him with his hoodie pulled down.
“He said it was traumatizing,” Moody said Monday, recounting what her cousin told her of the fiery nightmare. “He didn’t want his kids to burn up in the fire. He had to go back and get everybody out safe.”
The Brooklyn-born dad was attending college, according to friends and family, and lived just a few blocks from where he was killed, said police.
“He cares about people,” said Moody. “I just lost my grandbaby and he came all the way to Philly.”
“This is hurting because I can’t stop crying,” the cousin added.
Police have made no arrests as they continue to hunt down the gunman.
