VIDEO: Bronx man stabbed to death by girlfriend in NYCHA stairwell where he slept on nights she wouldn’t let him in (EXCLUSIVE)

By Andrew Califf and John Annese for the New York Daily News on Apr 23, 2023 at 5:17 pm

A Bronx man was stabbed to death by his girlfriend during a crazed argument in a NYCHA stairwell where he often slept on nights she wouldn’t let him into their apartment down the hall, police and friends of the troubled couple said Sunday.

When 37-year-old victim John “Biggie” Levestone came knocking at the fourth-floor Highbridge Gardens Houses apartment he shared with accused killer Crystal Fryson about 10:30 p.m. Saturday she refused to open the door, Ring doorbell video obtained by the Daily News shows.

An explosive argument ensued with Fryson’s young children watching, ending with the bloody slaying of Levestone, who friends described as a beloved neighborhood fixture who would DJ local gatherings.

Video obtained by Daily News shows the victim knocking on his girlfriend’s door during the deadly argument at their Bronx apartment. (New York Daily News Exclusive)

Fryson, 34, is now charged with murder for allegedly knifing her boyfriend in the torso after following him into the hallway stairwell of their apartment building on University Ave. near W. 166th St., cops said.

“She was the couldn’t-be-bothered type and he was a take-me-back type,” said neighbor Rain Moore, 55. “She would hang out with him if he had a few dollars in his pocket and if he didn’t he slept in the hall.”

Moore last spoke to Levestone the day of his death.

“They came down together to go get groceries and he asks me, ‘Why do y’all women have crazy attitudes?’ He asked me, ‘Is it cause of periods? Like what is it?’ And we all laughed it off.”

The fatal encounter began with Levenstone standing outside the closed door to the apartment asking to be let in as Fryson screamed and cursed at him for nearly a full minute from inside, video obtained by the Daily News shows.

“I’ll dig your damn f—ing grave!” Fryson yelled.

“Open the door now,” he pleaded as she continued to scream.

“He was shouting and screaming at her,” said neighbor Justin Sanchez. “She kept shouting back from inside the apartment, ‘I don’t want to talk to you, you piece of s—.’”

Fryson gave up on being let inside and walked slowly down the hall to the stairwell, the video shows. Friends said he often slept there on nights Fryson, who they described as cruel and volatile, wouldn’t let him inside.

“Now his broke a– is running,” Fryson can be heard yelling from behind the apartment door in the video as Levestone retreated to the public stairwell.

As the victim walked down the hallway he tried to break neighbors’ Ring cameras, video shows.

“He was under the influence and smacked our camera,” Sanchez said. “He then went down the hall trying to rip cameras off.”

Moments after Levestone disappeared into the stairwell, Fryson, followed by two other women, emerged from the apartment and followed him there, video shows. A small child stayed behind in the apartment doorway, looking down the hallway.

“He stopped hollering and went into the stairwell and she came out screaming,” Sanchez told the News. “The real fighting happened in the stairwell. They just kept yelling in the stairwell but I don’t know what happened after that. I just heard children start screaming and crying.”

Fryson can be heard screaming obscenities from inside the stairwell while the two women she was with ran back into the apartment in a panic.

“Move back, move back, move back, move back!,” she can be heard yelling at her boyfriend. “I dare you to come over here.”

The stabbing in the stairwell is not captured on camera.

“I’m going to jail,” a frantic Fryson muttered to herself repeatedly after emerging from the stairwell, the video shows.

“No, mom, it’s self-defense,” one of her young kids answered her. “it’s self-defense, it’s self-defense!”

Medics rushed Levestone to Lincoln Hospital but he couldn’t be saved.

“He would do anything for anybody,” said family friend Cookie Ortiz. “Everybody loved him. He never did a mean thing in his life.”

“His mom used to tell him ‘Leave that girl, that girl is gonna hurt you,’” she added. “She had all sorts of bad habits.”

Cops took his Fryson into custody at the scene and on Sunday charged her with murder, manslaughter and weapon possession. Her arraignment was pending in Bronx Criminal Court.

Police responded to two domestic violence reports involving Levestone and Fryson last year.

A Ring video from 2022 obtained by the Daily News shows a shirtless and disoriented Levestone trying to open neighbors’ doors before staggering back into their shared apartment yelling, “Crystal! Crystal! Crystal!”

‘Calm down, calm down, calm down,” a woman’s voice responds.

A neighbor who asked not to be named described “an ongoing-abuse type situation” but said she never expected it would turn violent.

“He stayed there with her kids but sometimes she wouldn’t let him in,” the neighbor said. “If he was drunk or f—ed up she would lock him out and say he couldn’t come around her kids like that.”

Levestone’s neighbors and friends described him as eager to placate Fryson and give her money for her children even though she mistreated him. The neighbors also accused Fryson of cheating on the victim.

“I don’t know what sort of demon jumped in her soul for her to do that to her boyfriend,” said one of Levestone’s lifelong friends, who identified herself as Starr. “We would tell him, ‘Biggie, you got to let her go, you can fill that negative energy with something else.’”

Norman McGill, the president of the Highbridge Gardens Residents Association, described Levestone as a lifelong resident of the complex and a churchgoing man who “didn’t have much going for him, just always chilling or drinking on the block.”

“He was a real neighborhood hang-around guy,” McGill said. “He used to play music for everybody. He was our neighborhood DJ. He was very friendly, helpful, well known around the community. This will hit us hard.”

Levestone worked odd jobs like cleaning his local church. When Fryson pressured him for money he sold off pieces of his beloved DJ stereo equipment, McGill said.

Fryson was arrested for child endangerment in October 2021 when her son, then just 8, was found wandering alone in Macombs Dam Park near Yankee Stadium. The disposition of that case was not immediately clear Sunday but neighbors said she lost custody of her children to the city Administration for Children’s Services for a time.

“She is a little off, for her as a mother to do something like that,” McGill said. “I don’t want to say it, but like crazy. There is a look in her eye that was just unsettled.”

Levestone’s last post on Facebook Friday night alluded to troubles in his relationship. “Even tho she [may] think I’m mad at her right now but I still love you Candle Light my baby for life,” he wrote, referring to Fryson by a nickname.

On Sunday, April 16, he wrote, “I just don’t know what to do at this point anything I do or what I do it’s just not enough but Lord I know you got me and I need you right now.”

On April 16, he posted a picture of him and Fryson together and captioned it, “My everything.” She responded with a lighthearted meme of two donuts hugging that read, “I love you so much you donut even know!”

When Fryson neglected her kids, Levestone would step in, friends of the victim said.

“He was a great stepdad, treated those kids like his own. He was a family man,” said one longtime friend, who identified herself by the nickname Sassy.

“She would get in other men’s cars and we would tell Biggie, ‘Your girl is cheating on you.’ And he would just get depressed. He never smoked a cigarette in his life before this year. Now he does all the time,” Sassy added. “All he wanted was to be loved. She had baby daddies in and out and Biggie just wanted to be there, be a good man.”

Thomas McCellan, Levestone’s cousin, said the two sang in their church choir as children.

“Biggie was the life of the party,” McCellan said. “There be a barbecue, ‘Biggie! Come get on the grill, DJ Biggie!’”

A trail of blood still covered the floor leading from the hallway of the building into the stairwell Sunday morning.

Levestone’s family lives in another building in the Highbridge Gardens complex, where they gathered to grieve Sunday.

“Just lost my son, I can’t talk about this right now,” his mother said.

“It’s too raw right now,” an aunt added.

https://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc-crime/ny-bronx-man-fatally-stabbed-ex-girlfriend-20230423-fxm5ysgqinbczjxaf4koftqvba-story.html