Woman brutally stabbed 14 times by career criminal sues housing authority for unlocked entrance in NYC complex
A woman who was brutally stabbed and nearly killed by an intruder in a New York City Housing Authority complex in Brooklyn last year has filed a negligence suit against the agency for allegedly failing to secure the entrance to the building — further tarnishing NYCHA’s reputation as the nation’s largest slumlord.
Sophia Rostom, 26, was visiting a friend in the Farragut Houses at 111 Bridge Street when serial criminal Maurice Brister, who entered the unlocked building, stabbed her 14 times in the head, heart, lungs, arms, leg and buttocks while she was waiting for an elevator in the lobby on the morning of March 28, the lawsuit says.
Brister stabbed at least one other woman that day and was charged with attempted murder.
Rostom, a medical technician and mother of a young child, lost nearly half of her blood and was clinging to life after the attack, having sustained puncture wounds to vital organs.
She underwent emergency heart and lung surgeries and spent more than a week in New York Presbyterian’s intensive care unit recovering from her injuries, the suit said.
Rostom still suffers from severe physical and psychological trauma stemming from the incident and is unable to work, her lawyers John Morgan and Moses Ahn of Morgan & Morgan told The Post.
The lawsuit, filed in Brooklyn Supreme Court, cites audits conducted by the city comptroller’s office in 2018 and 2022, which found nearly all front entrance doors at the Farragut Houses were left open and “unsecured” due to broken or faulty locks.
The complaint claims Brister entered the building through the unlocked, unsecured, broken, and/or inoperable door.
Rostom’s suit claims NYCHA leadership knew about the findings and failed to fix or replace the locks or doors.
Investigators working with Rostom’s legal team recently visited the same building where she was viciously attacked and discovered that the entrance door was still unlocked.
The lawyers provided The Post with a video of the unlocked door.
“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.
“Ms. Rostom’s injuries forever altered her young life and derailed her career. Nearly a year after this tragic incident, she remains unable to return to work and has yet to fully recover.”
The lawsuit — citing the comptroller’s reports — said NYCHA’s failure to secure lobby entrances to its housing complex is a systemic problem.
“This lawsuit is about more than getting justice for Ms. Rostom. NYCHA needs to take immediate steps to improve safety, not only for the 3,000-plus residents of the Farragut Houses, but also for all 360,000 residents of its properties and its guests. Our lawsuit alleges this incident was preventable, and Morgan & Morgan won’t rest until NYCHA is held accountable and improves its security for its residents and guests,” Rostom’s attorneys said.
An audit released by then-Comptroller Scott Stringer in October 2018 found eight of the 10 entrance doors of the Farragut Houses were open and discovered similarly malfunctioning locks at numerous other NYCHA projects throughout the city.
But in September 2022, current city Comptroller Brad Lander issued a follow-up audit warning to NYCHA that found open, unsecured or broken doors and windows near entrances was a “large, systemic, and apparently worsening” problem at a number of buildings.
His audit found that 40% of the entrance door locks of the 262 NYCHA developments visited were broken and 37% of the building entrance doors were open.
The audit found door security at Farragut Houses was even worse in the follow-up audit — with 90% of the locks broken and doors open.
Rostom’s suit says NYCHA management and employees failed to take “the necessary and requisite steps to prevent this foreseeable occurrence” despite having had “knowledge” of the security problems.
NYCHA and the office of Mayor Eric Adams — who appoints NYCHA leadership — had no immediate comment.
Public Advocate Jumaane Williams’ office has repeatedly named NYCHA one of the city’s worst landlords.
