Brooklyn woman whose son and husband were gunned down sues landlord over deaths

By the time Jason Pass gunned down his neighbors in the hallway of their apartment building, the owners of the complex were already aware he was a security threat, according to the victims’ family.

Now, that family is suing the building’s owners for failing to keep them safe.

Marie Delille watched as her husband and adult son were fatally shot outside of the apartment they all shared in October 2023. The dispute arose from a noise complaint, but Pass, a former state correction officer who lived downstairs, had been threatening the family for months, the lawsuit states.

Delille, who dodged bullets as she tried to pull her husband away from Pass in the hallway, said the owners and managers of the sprawling complex did not do enough to prevent the violence. She said she repeatedly went to the security office to report Pass for harassment, and no action was taken.

“That man [was] killing my family point blank, I’m the one calling 911,” she said, accusing the staff of pretending to take notes whenever she would come in.

Delille, who now lives in Canarsie with her three surviving children, alleged the property’s security guards did not aid her family during the shooting, and is seeking $10 million in damages in the lawsuit she filed in Brooklyn Supreme Court last month.

“ We’re hoping that this could be a landmark case for the state and really change the way that landlords look at providing a safe environment for their tenants,” said Adam Konta, Delille’s attorney. “I think that landlords have been able to hide behind the inaction of people under these circumstances in the past, but the reality is that they have a duty to provide a safe environment.”

A spokesperson for Clipper Management, which oversees the building, said in a statement that the company was “committed to making Flatbush Gardens a safe and welcoming place for all our residents.” He called the double homicide “tragic,” but declined to comment on the lawsuit, citing the pending litigation.

According to the suit and property records, the building is owned by Renaissance Equity Holdings LLC and Clipper Realty Inc., whose CEO David Bistricer was named among the city’s “worst landlords” by then-Public Advocate Bill de Blasio in 2010. Bistricer did not respond to inquiries.

The shooting went viral on social media after surveillance footage from the hallway was released. Pass, who had been arrested on menacing and reckless endangerment charges in 2005, fled the scene, but police found and fatally shot him during a confrontation in South Brooklyn just days after the shooting.

NYPD officials said officers stopped Pass, 47, as he was driving and he pulled out a knife. The 15-minute standoff ended when officers shot Pass after he charged at them with the knife, according to officials.

Tensions between Pass and Delille’s family had been simmering for months before the shooting, as Pass often angrily accused the family of making noise, even when they weren’t, Delille said. One day the previous summer, she said, a security guard knocked on her door to tell her that Pass had complained again.

“I was just spreading peanut butter on the bread. The knife just fell,” she recalled. “Then he be like, ‘Be careful with this man downstairs, he’s crazy.’ That was the red flags.”

In 2022, Flatbush Gardens residents held a rally to pressure the management to address what they said were decrepit living conditions, including rats, roaches and crumbling ceilings. The next year, the Adams administration awarded the property a massive tax break Bistricer said would alleviate problems like the plumbing and roofing, multiple outlets reported. But the complex, which features 2,500 rent-stabilized units across roughly 60 buildings, had about 4,000 active code violations at the time of the shooting, according to Delille’s lawsuit.

The suit also detailed other safety issues at Flatbush Gardens, including the Brooklyn district attorney charging 18 people who allegedly operated as a gang out of the property with violent conspiracy charges in 2018.

Delille said she and her three remaining children moved to Canarsie after living in a hotel for three months following the incident. She said she could not ever return to Flatbush Gardens, noting she felt unsafe there long before her family’s dispute with Pass escalated.

Residents at the family’s old building expressed varying perspectives about safety at the property. Some said they felt safe and that the management could not have done much to prevent the conflict between Delille’s family and Pass.

But neighbor Elizabeth Robles said she was rebuffed after complaining to building staff about a stranger who kept playing with her doorknob as if they were trying to enter her apartment.

“I was basically laughed at and told I was bugging,” said Robles, who has lived at the complex since 2017. “We have a lot of people just walking in the building that don’t even live there, people keep coming through the basement, they keep breaking the locks. They don't even fix it no more.”

Delille said Flatbush Garden employees never called her after the shooting to express condolences or see how she was doing. She added that she now attends nursing school in Queens, which gives her something to work toward as she grieves her husband and son.

“ I feel like this pain one day will end my life, because some days … I feel like going to the cemetery, digging and burying myself, too,” she said through tears. “But then I’d be like, ‘No, I cannot do this to my kids.’”