Residents of a four-story, historic building on a quiet Astoria street said the family on the second floor always seemed odd.
They were usually quiet but seemed to quarrel easily, neighbors said. They posted a standing order to the outside world on their buzzer downstairs: “Don’t buzz our bell!”
But when police armed in tactical gear burst into the home of brothers Angelo and Andrew Hatziagelis on Jan. 17, neighbors said they were stunned by what was discovered inside. Police said the brothers were hoarding a stash of guns, ammunition, body armor, threatening manifestos and homemade bombs in their apartment.
“It’s not even just one feeling, it’s like a plethora of feelings,” said upstairs neighbor Shaleen Heffernan, who first met the Hatziagelis family almost 20 years ago when they moved into the seven-unit building shortly after she did.
“On one hand, you’re like, it figures ‘cause they’re not normal,” Heffernan continued. “And then you’re scared.”
Law enforcement officials also found a scrawled “hit list” where the brothers vowed to “wipe out the scum,” including police officers, judges, politicians and celebrities. They also discovered a notebook filled with pages of handwritten bomb-making instructions.
“What kind of headspace are they in that they would make a manifesto? And a hit list?” said Heffernan. “And then you feel bad because you’re their neighbor, and like, could you have done more?”
That question has bedeviled New Yorkers for decades. The brothers are presumed innocent until they stand trial. But the neighbors’ aversion to getting involved in other people’s business is common in big cities like New York, especially if something happens close to home. Distant gunshots and violent fights can go unreported.
Catherine Sanderson, a professor of psychology at Amherst College, said three main factors may discourage neighbors from getting involved in other people’s business — particularly if they’re in an urban setting, where she said research suggests people are generally less likely to intervene.
“When things are ambiguous, people really worry about jumping to the wrong conclusion,” Sanderson said. “In this case, it could be, ‘I don’t really know what was going on. I know they’re building something. I know they’re storing something. But maybe that’s part of their job, or maybe they’re just cooking, or maybe they’re just creators, et cetera.’”
In cases where neighbors are aware of what’s going on, Sanderson said they may feel like it’s not their responsibility to do something, or they’re concerned about facing negative consequences.
“People worry,” she said. “‘If I call the police, am I going to get targeted? Am I going to get involved? Is it going to cause a threat to myself or my family?’”
But that attitude is in direct opposition to the NYPD’s “see something, say something” safety slogan, which encourages New Yorkers to report behavior or objects that seem strange or out of place.
“It could be anything that’s abnormal for your neighborhood, your building, your block,” said Tarik Sheppard, the NYPD’s deputy commissioner of public information.
Sheppard said even seemingly insignificant behaviors can qualify, such as lots of people entering and leaving an apartment without the actual residents, or neighbors not putting any trash — or dumping tons of garbage all at once.
He said New Yorkers have several different ways to report suspicious activity, and it can all be done anonymously. Calling 311 is always a safe bet for minor complaints, while 800-577-TIPS or 800-NYC-SAFE are official hotlines for more serious concerns, such as crime or terrorism.
“It may be nothing … but if you’re not reporting, we don’t even have a chance,” Sheppard said.
Luz Beriguete said she still wishes she’d called the police on her Bronx neighbors when she had a chance.
Back in November 2021, Beriguete was home in her building on Creston Avenue and on the phone with her sister when she heard gunshots in the apartment upstairs.
That couple had a history of domestic violence, Beriguete said, but when neighbors called police, victim Ashley Ducille would shoo them away. So Beriguete was ambivalent about calling the cops this time, and said the neighbors who lived next door to Ducille didn’t react either.
“It’s hard because no one wants to get involved in other people’s problems,” Beriguete told Gothamist in Spanish. “If you don’t know the background … if you’re not sure what someone is doing, it’s a little hard.”
Beriguete found maggots dropping from her ceiling a week after she’d heard the gunshots. She alerted the landlord and police were dispatched to check the apartment upstairs. Officers found the decomposing bodies of Ducille, 29, and her boyfriend Kareem Kilpatrick, 40. Police said at the time that Kilpatrick shot Ducille, then turned the gun on himself.
“If I could go back — I say from my heart — and I heard that again, yes, I’d call the police,” Beriguete said.
The maggots infiltrated much of the building, and Beriguete and her neighbors battled them for weeks while dealing with the trauma of the deaths upstairs.
Beriguete has since moved out of the building. She said living there after the incident became too much to bear.
“If you’re certain that something is happening, and you feel inside that something bad is happening, you have to call out for help,” Beriguete said. “Because if you don’t call out for help, you’ll be left with doubt.”
Neighbors in the building on 36th Avenue in Astoria said they didn’t observe obvious signs about the alleged illegal activities in the Hatziagelis household.
Shannon Ayala spent about four years living across the hall from the family in the only other apartment on their floor. After an early argument with the brothers’ mother, Karen Hatziagelis, about keeping the window opened or closed in their vestibule on hot summer days, Ayala said he made an effort to be nice to the family to avoid problems.
They talked occasionally while coming and going, and Ayala said his roommate would often chat with the brothers when they all smoked on the front stoop.
“They were like, kind of normal,” Ayala said. “They just weren’t sunshine people, so to speak. They weren’t bubbly.”
He said he thought it was “eccentric” when the Hatziagelis family installed a surveillance camera outside their door, but he wasn’t alarmed about the random boxes and junk they always kept piled in the hallway.
“There was no giveaway that there was something that you had to be suspicious about,” he said. “I never thought so.”
Ayala moved out of the building about a month before the NYPD’s Bomb Squad and other law enforcement officials descended on the Hatziagelis’ apartment.
Andrew and Angelo Hatziagelis were indicted Jan. 29 on 130 counts of criminal weapons possession and other related violations, according to the Queens district attorney’s office.
They each face up to 25 years in prison if convicted. Andrew’s lawyer Naira Grigoryan said she had no comment on the case, and Angelo’s lawyer could not be reached.
Queens DA Melinda Katz said the mother, Karen Hatziagelis, and one of her other sons are not facing charges at this time. Karen Hatziagelis hung up the phone when Gothamist called her recently.
Jerry Crisci, whose Italian immigrant family bought the Astoria building back in 1959 and owned it until selling it in 2007, said he was surprised to hear about the incident.
“We had a grapevine in the back,” he recalled. “We had a fig tree in the back. My mother would grow vegetables and invite people, ‘Oh, here’s some tomatoes.’ We knew everybody in the building. And you never expected anything like this.”
Even when his parents moved away, Crisci said he’d keep up with the building’s residents and often made little excuses to go inside their apartments to make sure everything was safe.
“I think people have changed,” he said. “You can have different opinions, that’s fine, that’s what America’s all about. Different nationality, different language, different food, but you don’t have a right to build bombs in your apartment to, God forbid, what were they thinking about?”
“Nobody talks to their neighbors to find out,” said Crisci’s wife, Patti. “You can live right next door to somebody and not know them at all.”
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