By Andy Newman, New York Times
A 76-year-old Brooklyn woman fought back as a robber stabbed her a half-dozen times yesterday afternoon, but died after staggering two blocks to a police station and collapsing on the floor, the authorities said.
The man who stabbed her climbed into a black Cadillac sedan, where an elderly man awaited him, and sped off, the police said. No arrests had been made as of late last night.
Neighbors of the woman, Rachel Paliseno, were stunned by the killing in Bath Beach in southwest Brooklyn, where her life revolved around St. Finbar’s Roman Catholic Church, directly across the street from where she was stabbed.
The police said that Ms. Paliseno had just left her house on Bay 20th Street to buy groceries around 1:30 p.m. She asked her landlady, “Do you need anything from Key Food?” according to Father Joseph T. Holcomb, the pastor at St. Finbar’s.
Ms. Paliseno had gone about 100 feet from her house before a heavyset, balding white man about 40 and 6 feet 2 inches tall, attacked her, the police said. But Ms. Paliseno, who neighbors said stood about 5 feet tall and weighed 120 pounds, fought back, the police said. She and her assailant rolled around in the street in a fierce struggle that left her with defensive wounds on her arms. But she was stabbed at least six times, and one of the thrusts went all the way through her torso, said a police official.
“It’s a big knife,” the official said. The police do not believe she knew her attacker. “We have a couple of theories,” the official said, “but it looks like a straight-up robbery.”
The elderly man, who had been in the driver’s seat, made way for the attacker, who got behind the wheel.
Ms. Paliseno walked to Bath Avenue and turned right. Aaron Huggins, 31, who works at a kennel, Universal K-9, saw her approach and could not believe his eyes.
“I saw this lady coming down the road,” Mr. Huggins said. “She had blood on her clothes and it was dripping from her arm. She was coming toward me. She was walking straight and she wasn’t saying anything. I said, ‘Ma’am, do you need help?’ She kept on walking. She must have been in shock. I thought the furthest she’s going to get is the police station.”
He was right. At the 62nd Precinct station house, Ms. Paliseno walked up five stairs, through a set of double doors, told the police that her purse had been stolen, then collapsed, the police said. Sgt. Melvin Acosta and Officer Paul Zito got out a first-aid kit and cared for her until an ambulance arrived and took her to Lutheran Medical Center, a police official said. She died a short time later.
Ms. Paliseno was divorced and lived alone on the ground floor of a house owned by an elderly couple for whom she frequently ran errands.
Last night, her former husband’s brother, who spoke on the condition that his name not be used, said he was not surprised to hear that she had tried to fight off a knife-wielding attacker who must have outweighed her by more than 50 pounds.
“She would be the type to resist,” he said. “She was a little toughie. She was not stubborn, but she was a person who would answer you back. She wasn’t timid.”
The police were not sure how much money was in Ms. Paliseno’s purse, but her ex-husband’s brother said he doubted that it was more than $50. “She wasn’t rich,” he said. “I never saw her with expensive jewelry or clothes. She was not a flashy person, so why they would pick on her I don’t know.”
Father Holcomb said that Ms. Paliseno, known to one and all as Frenchie because she was French-Canadian, had worked in the cafeteria at St. Finbar’s school. Other neighbors said she belonged to a rosary society and helped out at the church flea market. Elizabeth Rodriguez remembered that Ms. Paliseno used to serve her coffee at Tuesday night bingo games. “She was a kind, beautiful woman,” Ms. Rodriguez said.
Ms. Rodriguez said she could not imagine a stabbing in the street right off Bath Avenue, the heart of a tidy, middle-class neighborhood.
“I walk around here 2, 3 in the morning, nobody bothers me. You’ve got the precinct one block away. Everybody knows everybody.”
The police said there were at least four witnesses to the stabbing, including a retired firefighter. But as of last night they had not found the Cadillac or the men inside it.
As a police van drove down Benson Avenue, a block from the crime scene, broadcasting a description of the men and their car through a loudspeaker, Marie Chapnick stood on her porch with her 7-year-old daughter. “We’ve never had anything like this happen in this neighborhood before,” said Ms. Chapnick, a nurse practitioner. “When I came home, my daughter was crying. She wanted to move.”