It is hard to say whether last week's report of a woman crushed to death by an elevator in Midtown Manhattan served as inspiration, but a deranged attacker turned a Brooklyn apartment building elevator into a crematorium on Saturday, burning alive a former girlfriend who was trapped inside.
The unnamed suspect, who turned himself in to police early Sunday, is being questioned about his role in the unspeakably gruesome death of Delores Gillespie, 64, of Prospect Heights.
The victim was on her way home from buying groceries when she stepped out of the elevator on the floor where she lived, unaware that the ex-beau had set a deadly trap. Minutes earlier, he had glued shut the locks on the elderly woman’s fifth-floor apartment and doused the elevator door with accelerant, the New York Daily News reports.
As the woman exited the car at around 4:15 p.m., she was intercepted by the psycho who was dressed in black. In his hands were a barbecue lighter, a wine bottle, and a canister of combustible fluid. He forced the woman back into the elevator, sprayed her with accelerant, then tossed a lit Molotov cocktail into the car, turning it into a raging inferno.
NYPD spokesman Paul Browne is quoted as saying, “She goes up in flames and falls to the floor. I’ve never seen any s*** like this, and I’ve been doing this a long time.”
The horrific attack was caught on surveillance video, which shows the attacker finishing his demonic work by spraying Gillespie’s burning body with ignitable liquid before fleeing down the stairs.
The woman, burned beyond recognition, was pronounced dead at the scene. Five other tenants are reported as having suffered minor injuries.
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