A judge Tuesday said she needs to assess a hellish squatter’s right to “liberty’’ before she can boot him from the West Village building where he’s been terrorizing residents for nearly a year — even after he was a no-show at the hearing.
Lawyers for 400 Bleeker St. in the trendy Manhattan neighborhood demanded the judge sign off on a restraining order that would ban alleged crazy-like-a-fox Melvin DeJesus, 66, from the well-heeled building.
“He began his reign of terror in the building with death threats,” said Paul Coppe, a lawyer for site owners the Brodsky Organization, to Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Kathy J King.
“He’s said ‘I have a knife and I’m going to use it,’ ” Coppe said of DeJesus — who has a 30-year-old attempted-murder conviction.
“It’s not an exaggeration to say the building residents are terrified.”
But King said she needs more time to render a decision — after previously delaying the case in early April.
“This is a request that affects someone’s liberty,” she said Tuesday. “So I will have to take this back to chambers.”
Tenants in the building — where a two-bedroom unit recently rented for $6,700 a month — were left fuming.
“If she cares so much about [DeJesus’s] ‘liberty’ to free accommodation, maybe she should house him,” a resident said.
“What more does it take? An actual violent crime?”
“I am angry and feeling a bit helpless,” the resident said.
Coppe had insisted to the judge, “The underlying case is based essentially on nuisance abatement,”
DeJesus “promptly embarked on what can only be described as a reign of terror” when he moved in just months before the previous life-long rent-control tenant died last fall, Coppe recalled for King.
“Mr. DeJesus is a multiple predicate felon,” Coppe said.
The Brodsky Organization has also filed a $5.5 million lawsuit seeking to ban DeJesus from the fifth-floor rent-controlled unit he commandeered after longtime tenant John Grafenecker’s death at 84 last fall.
Since then, DeJesus has allegedly agonized his neighbors by keeping them up all night with noxious parties, yelling death threats and at one point, storing a 4-gallon jug of gasoline outside his door, according to the suit.
The company won a restraining order in February barring him from harassing tenants, and he also faces separate eviction proceedings brought against him by the landlord.
In March, he was arrested for allegedly smashing a neighbor’s Ring doorbell camera.
Tenants say he’s only gotten worse over the months, with many claiming in court papers that his late-night terror have forced them to flee the building in the middle of the night.
Last month, DeJesus showed up to court, where his conduct required a flock of court officers to follow him as he yelled in the court room and court-house hallways, mumbled about dying and was granted an adjournment for two months after he claimed a medical emergency.
Coppe noted that DeJesus knew to be in court Tuesday, since he requested to move the delay up by a month, and served him papers informing him of the new date.