A woman who was stabbed 14 times last year has filed suit against the New York City Housing Authority claiming it failed to secure the entrance the building where the intruder attacked her.
Sophia Rostom, 26, was visiting a friend and waiting for an elevator at Farragut Houses in Brooklyn on March 28 when Maurice Brister entered the building, stabbing her in the head, heart, lungs, arms, alegs, and buttocks.
He was captured and charged with attempted murder, but The New York Post didn’t say what the disposition of his case has been so far. He was also accused of stabbing another woman that day, the Post said. The tabloid apparently did not cover the attack at the time, but the New York Daily News said he was accused of stabbing a 49-year-old grandmother, who survived, and that he lives in the stairwell of the building.
The Daily News said a woman was stabbed inside the lobby of the Farragut Houses and refused to give her name to police. Neighbors said she was known to do drugs with Brister. It’s not clear who that woman was.
Brister had multiple arrests on his record, the Daily News said.
Rostom’s lawsuit claims that the door Brister entered was unlocked, unsecured, broken, and/or inoperable, The Post said.
The complaint says that audits conducted by the city comptroller’s office in 2018 and 2022 found most of the front entrance doors to Farragut Houses were left open and “unsecured” because of broken or faulty locks.
Investigators working with Rostum’s attorneys visited the building recently and found the doors still unlocked.
“All landlords – from the owner of a single home residence to the nation’s largest public housing authority – have a responsibility to ensure residents and guests will be safe. What our client suffered is a terrifying example of what can happen when landlords allegedly fail in that duty,” Rostom’s lawyers said in a statement to The Post.
Rostum, a medical technician and mother of a young child, underwent emergency surgeries and spent more than a week hospitalized after the attack, according to the lawsuit. She still suffers from severe physical and psychological trauma and cannot work, the attorneys said.
The lawsuit says NYCHA failed to take “the necessary and requisite steps to prevent this foreseeable occurrence” despite having “knowledge” of the problems.
