This is Jerome Isaac, 47, the guy who allegedly set ablaze an elderly Prospect Heights woman in an elevator earlier this week, and later presented himself at the police station, reeking of gasoline. He is being charged with the first-degree murder of Delores Gillespie, 73. She hired him to do handyman work but let him go because he was stealing, according to her nephew.
Apparently, Isaac cornered Gillespie in the elevator at 203 Underhill Avenue yesterday, sprayed her with some flammable substance, and set her on fire with a bottle gas-bomb, which killed her, as reported in the New York Post, Daily News, and elsewhere. The police said he also left a note on the elderly woman’s door with a list of jobs he had done that he needed to be paid for.
This is a sad loss for Prospect Heights, as neighbors universally described her as kind, generous, and wonderful, looking out for neighbors and the community. She had just returned home from shopping
Read more in the New York Post.
Here’s a ghastly pic of the deadly sequence of events, courtesy of NYPD and posted on metro.us:
“When I left Saturday afternoon, 203 Underhill Ave. was my home,” wrote Lauren Johnston in the NY Daily News. “Now it is a murder scene. My neighbor Delores was horrifically burned alive in an elevator just a few feet from my apartment door. My hallway was beige. Now it is a charred black shell covered in thick, soppy soot, and shattered glass.”