Police search on for suspect in deadly shooting of Lavel Fraiser in Brooklyn
NEW YORK -- Detectives in Brooklyn are trying to figure out who shot and killed a man in Crown Heights early Sunday morning.
The killing, one of many recent shootings, has rocked the community. CBS New York's Derick Waller spoke with concerned residents.
Neighbors said they are alarmed by the recent uptick in violent crime.
Just off Franklin Avenue on Sterling Place is where the NYPD Crime Scene Unit was operating Sunday night, hours after 40-year-old Lavel Fraiser was gunned down.
"Very good guy. Very good guy," friend Chris McCarthy said of Fraiser, who left behind a wife and several children.
McCarthy was still in shock following the death of the man friend called "Flip." Loved ones left flowers, candles and balloons at the scene.
Crime scene investigators started processing the scene, walking in and out of the basement apartment on Sterling Place.
"They got a lot of friends. Sometimes they go, hang out, they drink, they smoke and they leave," McCarthy said.
But this time was different. Police sources told CBS New York the gunman knocked on the door at around 1 a.m., and when Fraiser opened it, the gunman fired four shots, hitting him in his torso.
Fraiser was later pronounced dead at Kings County Hospital.
That gunman is still at large.
That's why police started posting flyers asking for any information.
"I heard four gunshots," neighbor Phoebe Pinder said. I was up. I was sitting in there and I was like, 'That couldn't have been gunshots' because we just had a shooting like just recently."
Only two blocks away, deli worker Nazim Berry died after a customer shot him in the head on Feb. 26.
Then, three days later, 13-year-old Troy Gill was shot and killed walking home from a Brooklyn Nets game.
According to the NYPD, there have been four killings in the 77th Precinct so far this year, compared to seven in all of 2023.
But the latest spike pails in comparison to 1993, when Crown Heights saw 82 people killed.
Neighbors don't want to go back to times like those.
"It's crazy because I've lived here for two years and it feels like such a safe neighborhood, but this is ... it's getting really scary. We don't know what's going on here," Pinder said.
Back on Sterling Place, there was no word on a possible suspect in the shooting death of Fraiser.
Anyone with any information is asked to call the NYPD's Crime Stoppers hotline at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477), or for Spanish, 1-888-57-PISTA (74782). You can also submit a tip via their website or via DM on Twitter, @NYPDTips. All calls are kept confidential.