By Keith Olsen
At the beginning of August, the sidewalk at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 12th Street in Park Slope had been covered with candles, photos, flowers, teddy bears, potato chips, rosaries, and even unopened bottles of Corona beer and Bacardi rum. Around 70 friends and family members gathered for a vigil at the busy intersection in this upper-middle-class Brooklyn neighborhood, remembering a young man, an expectant father, who had been killed there a few nights earlier.
Alex Santiago was a fixture in Park Slope, even at 22 years old. His parents and extended family members had deep ties to the neighborhood, having grown up there. He came by the neighborhood often and maintained relationships with Park Slope residents of all ages, even after he had moved to Sunset Park.
The old and the young knew Santiago as the funny kid with the beaming smile, who would often carry packages for the elderly. Friends remembered him as a video-game enthusiast, who spent days on end playing X-Box. His family called him “Ham,” his childhood nickname, and thought of him as a devoted son, brother, nephew, and soon-to-be father.
“He was just a joyful person,” said Daisy Hornedo, a family friend who used to babysit Santiago when he was a child. “He was always smiling. He was respectful to everybody. He helped people when he could.”
Santiago worked most recently this summer as a temporary custodian at Yeshiva University before he was laid off due to budget constraints. He also worked in the same capacity for a bus company and had earned certification as a security guard in May.
But on August 1, Santiago’s body was found on the intersection of Fifth Avenue and 12th Street in Park Slope around midnight. He had been beaten with tire irons and stabbed to death.
In a neighborhood that is often perceived as a safe haven for young, affluent families, a place notable for its sidewalk-spanning strollers, the murder sent out shock waves. In fact, this April, New York Magazine named Park Slope the “most livable” neighborhood in New York City, in part due to its safety and low levels of crime. Based on a study by the journalist and social scientist Nate Silver, the magazine found Park Slope to be at the top of the list in each of 12 categories, including housing quality/cost, schools, nightlife and safety. In the article, Silver wrote that Park Slope is “the very definition of a well-rounded neighborhood,” and that “it’s blessed with…low crime.” Its safety grade of 82 out of 100 placed it well among the top neighborhoods in this category.
But actual crime statistics reveal a darker side to the neighborhood. Though overall crime has declined throughout the city in the past decade and in pockets in neighborhoods themselves, violent crimes like rape, burglary, murder and assault have increased, including in Park Slope. In New York City overall, murder alone has seen a 17 percent jump this year compared to 2009, as of August, according to New York Police Department statistics. Yet even in the midst of this rise in violent crime, Santiago’s murder seems especially senseless, given the seemingly harmless events of the night.
“It’s definitely a little scary for something so brutal to happen so close to where I live,” said Alisha Levin, whose apartment is only five minutes away from the murder scene. “Especially in Park Slope, which is so friendly and where people make a real effort to connect with their community.”
Earlier in the evening on August 1, Santiago had gone out with three friends to Tiki Hut, a neighborhood hangout, to get drinks, his family said. On his way to the bar, he passed by a bodega, where he and his friends had a run-in with a couple of young men who were hanging around the entrance of the store. According to Santiago’s fiancée, Stephanie Santiago, the group didn’t like the way that Alex and his friends had looked at them, so they soon began to tussle.
“Teenagers nowadays, you can’t even look at anyone the wrong way,” Carmen Reyes, Alex Santiago’s aunt, said. “A group of people shouldn’t be fighting him over a look. It makes no sense.”
Stephanie Santiago last spoke to her fiancé around 11:30 that evening, when he called her to say that he had gotten involved in an altercation at the bodega. He told her that everything was going to be fine.
“He called a half an hour before everything happened,” Stephanie Santiago explained. “He told me he got into a fight, but he didn’t know [the attackers]. He never saw them before. They didn’t know each other.”
Santiago and his friends cleaned themselves up after the fight, and headed back in the direction of Tiki Bar. A block from where the incident had taken place, he and his friends noticed that they were being followed by a dark van. According to an eyewitness, four people jumped out of the van, and between 15 and 20 more people followed, wielding crowbars, baseball bats and knives. Two of Santiago’s friends fled, leaving him and Jonathan Burgos, who stayed behind to help defend Santiago, the lone targets of the attack.
“These were not human beings who did this to him,” Reyes said. “They’re cowards. They’re animals.”
In the midst of the melee, Joseph Rivera, a longtime Park Slope resident, heard the screams and loud banging noises and ran outside to attempt to help the victims. But he, too, was quickly attacked, and the assailants began throwing punches and cutting him with shards of glass. When Rivera left to call the police, one of the attackers smashed the window of his car with a crowbar. While he didn’t sustain serious injuries, his arms bore many cuts.
The mob then directed its attention to Santiago, beating him with tire irons, slamming the weapons repeatedly into his skull and body. They also stabbed him multiple times in the chest.
“I don’t know, you just think about things,” Reyes said. “What was he thinking when it happened? How did he feel, you know?”
Burgos, too, was stabbed, suffering more than 20 cuts to the face, hands, and back. He has yet to describe the attackers’ appearances — most likely out of fear of retribution, according to relatives of Santiago. “He hasn’t said anything,” Reyes said. “I don’t know.”
Burgos did, however, tell the family that he remembered seeing the shiny silver of the blade, coming towards his face and between the slits of his hands, with which he had attempted to ward off the knife. Burgos remained on the street for about 15 minutes until an ambulance came to transport him to Lutheran Medical Center in Brooklyn, where he was released several days later.
But for Santiago, the ambulance that had saved his friend Burgos, was too late. He was taken to Methodist Hospital where he was pronounced dead, succumbing to the stab wounds and damage from the beating.
Reaction to the murder in the tony neighborhood has been somewhat mixed.
Even as Levin expressed her concern about safety, she cautioned against blowing the incident out of proportion. “I don’t think that it represents the area,” she said. “That’s not to say that Park Slope is or ever will be some utopian crime-free zone. It’s still New York City. Conflict happens everywhere.”
Craig Hammerman, the president of Community Board 6, which includes Park Slope, said, “It was not a random incident from what we’re told.” And due to that, “It isn’t an indication for someone to be fearful of the neighborhood.” Hammerman also said that residents have the opportunity to bring up their potential concerns at the precinct council meeting in mid-September.
Santiago’s family believes that the attack was gang-motivated, based on the number of attackers, as well as the brutality of the crime. However, eyewitnesses, like neighbors and store clerks in nearby businesses, have been extremely reluctant to label the crime as gang-related. They said they are fearful of the perpetrators coming to look for them if they go on the record, become integral to the investigation, or even whisper that they were around to witness what transpired.
“There was a group of people,” Reyes said. “They came in a van. They had weapons like they had. We think it’s probably gang-related, so no one is going to talk. Everyone is scared.”
At Commonwealth, a bar located on the corner of the intersection where Santiago was killed, there was an immediate reaction to the crime. “I think everyone had been talking, but not really knowing what they’re talking about,” employee Gary Ciddens said. “Everyone heard a different story.”
Now though, according to Ciddens, the neighborhood chatter has died down. Ciddens, however, said that he has noticed an increased police presence in a radius around the neighboring blocks.
While the brawl was loud and unusual enough for neighbors and passersby on the street to stop and stare, no one has come forward to provide any information about what they saw or what the perpetrators, who dashed away in the van, looked like. And for a family that has desperately searched for clues about what exactly happened, the fact that no one who was there that night has come forth with any information has been all the more painful.
“People need to come forward,” Reyes said. “They don’t have to use their names. We just want information.”
“It could happen to anyone,” added Jocelyn Colon, a close family friend. “People were there. They were watching. They need to say something.”
But gang presence is limited in the neighborhood, especially in the area where Santiago was killed. “They don’t really even have gangs in Park Slope,” Richard Curtis, the chair of the anthropology department at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, said. “Once upon a time, maybe.”
A report conducted by John Jay in 2003 on precincts in Brooklyn with gang prevalence showed that a crime of this nature has historically been rare across New York City. In areas like Brownsville and East Flatbush, with high rates of gang activity, more than 75 percent of murders have been attributed to gun violence.
Curtis helped write the Brownsville and East Flatbush study for the city, and has researched gangs previously. In this murder, like many others that are pegged as gang-related, he cautioned against assuming too much. Even an external factor like a poor economy, often a contributor in violence, isn’t necessarily attributable to gangs, because for the poorer to lower-middle class gang members, the economy has always been sour.
Instead, he thought of a different scenario. “I think of something like this as flocking behavior,” Curtis said. “Large groups of young teenagers swarming in the night.”
Curtis also noted that just because some of the 20 people might be involved in a gang, or have performed a ritualistic act of violence, the murder itself doesn’t have to be a product of gang violence. He explained that the causes for gang violence can range from something as simple as a look, a fight over a woman, or a turf invasion, where one gang may venture into another’s territory. But the requisite for a crime to be gang-related is often motive–with familiarity–between the perpetrators and victims.
“It’s hard to envision this as a gang-related activity,” he said. “If they’re organized, they probably wouldn’t do something like this. There wouldn’t be that many of them. My guess is that these were a bunch of young people who were drunk and doing something stupid.”
The New York City Police Department has thus far been reluctant to disclose any information to the press for fear of compromising their investigation, and police officials declined to be interviewed for this article. They have similarly told the Santiago family little, other than recently saying that they may have a lead.
The family would also like to end the violence. Retaliation would only continue the cycle of brutality. “We want justice, not revenge,” Reyes said. “We don’t want any more violence. We don’t need that. It won’t do anything.”
Meanwhile, Stephanie Santiago, the fiancée who has been left behind, hasn’t been sure of what to do. Her fiancé affectionately nicknamed her “Stalker,” because she was always keeping tabs on him, via Facebook, texts and phone calls. Now, she has struggled without his constant presence in her life, missing his voice on the phone, or the messages he left her. But on the night of the murder, Rivera, the man who tried to help Santiago, gave her a piece of him that she’ll always have: his wedding band.
She is due to give birth to her first child in just a few weeks and then she will focus on raising the baby. She already has the name picked out: Alexander, in honor of the father their son will never meet. Stephanie Santiago has also moved out of the Sunset Park apartment they shared and in with the victim’s parents so that they can all work together to raise the child.
“Once these people are caught and are behind bars, then we will have closure,” Hornedo said. “How do they get away with this? How do they sleep at night? There’s a family that’s hurting and a baby about to be born.”
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