Two Cops Suspended For Allegedly Refusing To Enter Apartment Of Ax-Attack Murder Victim

Two Brooklyn police officers are accused of refusing to enter an apartment where a 20-year-old woman was murdered with an ax and a four-year-old girl was sleeping.

The pair of officers from the 83rd Precinct allegedly claimed the apartment, at the Bushwick Houses, "was outside their jurisdiction," according to the NY Post, letting 75 minutes elapse before authorities entered the home to find Savannah Rivera dead and nearly decapitated.

The murder occurred early on Saturday, April 20th, at 811 Flushing Avenue. Rivera's friend, Angela Valle, was also attacked and ran outside, where an Uber driver stopped for her. Noticing that Valle was bleeding from stab wounds, he called 911.

Anonymous sources tell the Daily News that an FDNY EMS lieutenant "who responded to the building asked two officers from the 83rd Precinct, identified by sources as Officers Sean Doohan and Mary Sobieski, for an escort to the eighth floor apartment, concerned the killer might still be there, but they ignored that request."

The Post also reports that "[T]he 83rd Precinct officers ignored the request rather than cross onto the turf of Police Service Area 3 housing cops, sources and a witness said," and offers this timeline:

When Sobieski and Doohan arrived at 1:16 a.m., they listened to Valle’s account of the attack, but refused to set foot in the building, sources said.

By 1:40 a.m., they told dispatchers that the assignment was a completed assault, according to sources.

Four minutes later, two housing cops took over. But by 2:01 a.m., they too left, first to finish paperwork at their home base, then to check on Valle, by then at Elmhurst Hospital, sources said.

Finally, at 2:28 a.m., a housing sergeant responded to a radio call that EMS was again requesting an escort up to the apartment, sources said.

NYPD Deputy Commissioner Phil Walzak said on Monday, "The Brooklyn North Investigations Unit has reviewed the response and action of two officers from the 83 Precinct in this incident, and both are in the process of being suspended for failure to take appropriate action."

Authorities recovered an ax in the building's trash compactor. Valle's ex-boyfriend, Jerry Brown, 34, was arrested for killing Rivera and critically injuring Valle. Valle's four-year-old daughter, who was found in the apartment, was uninjured.

Brown turned himself in after speaking to a PIX 11 producer; in that interview, Brown, who said he suffered from mental illness, implied he had no memory of what happened on Saturday: "Somebody woke me up. I have a staple in my head. I woke up on the floor. I was drifting in and out of consciousness. I was on the floor in the hallway of a building."

He was undergoing a psychiatric evaluation on Monday.

Valle is continuing to recover from her injuries.