A Brooklyn woman who was brutally stabbed more than 10 times by a career criminal has filed a negligence complaint against the New York Housing Authority (NYCHA) for allegedly failing to keep the entrance to one of its buildings locked.
Sophia Rostom, 26, was visiting a friend in the Farragut Houses when intruder Maurice Brister stabbed her. Rostom was stabbed 14 times in the head, heart, lungs, arms, legs and buttocks while she was waiting for the elevator in the lobby in March last year. She was later brought to the hospital where she lost nearly half of her blood and underwent emergency heart and lung surgeries, per the New York Post, citing Rostom's lawyers John Morgan and Moses Ahn of Morgan & Morgan.
Negligence Lawsuit Against the NYCHA
In the lawsuit, Rostom's lawyers claimed Brister entered the building through one of the building's unlocked or unsecured doors. They also cited previous audits conducted by the city's comptroller's office in 2018 and 2022.
The 2018 audit found that 23.5% of doors in 262 NYCHA complexes were not properly secured. In the Farragut Houses, particularly, the audit found eight of the building's 10 doors open and with broken locks.
This number ballooned to 57.9% after another audit in 2022. It also found that door security at Farragut Houses worsened, with 90% of its locks broken and doors open.
Rostom's lawyers claimed NYCHA leadership was aware of the audit's findings but failed to fix or replace any broken locks or doors in the building.
"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.
The NYCHA's public housing complexes have been notorious for their poor living conditions, even earning the top spot on the annual Worst Landlord Watch List for four consecutive years from 2018 to 2021. The rankings are based on the average number of open housing code violations on the buildings of each landlord. As of 2021, the NYCHA had 600,480 open work orders.
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