The photo shows a mother and her daughter found dead in a suspected murder-suicide incident in their Brooklyn apartment – as their neighbor revealed the woman appeared agitated less than an hour before residents heard screams .
The bodies of 37-year-old Azalea Rivas, her 14-year-old daughter Azaria and their dog were discovered on September 25 in an apartment building on Brooklyn’s New York Avenue in Little Haiti.
Kathleen Kiki, 57, told that she ran into her neighbor around 6:13 a.m. Friday morning. Both women were walking their dogs.
“She wasn’t herself,” Kiki said.
Rivas was wearing AirPods and talking to someone. She seemed “very excited.”
Kiki greeted her and asked if she was okay, to which Rivas replied, “Yeah, you know.”
Azalea Rivas (right) and daughter Azaria (back) were found dead in their Brooklyn apartment on September 25th
A neighbor said Rivas was “not herself” and seemed “upset” hours before screaming and banging were heard
The neighbor added that she often saw the mother and daughter walking together
This was out of character as Rivas usually seemed “happy, cheerful and friendly.” Kiki often saw mother and daughter walking to the store together.
The couple had discussed bringing their dogs together for a dog playdate.
She thought it was an elderly person in the building who died, but when she found out it was her new neighbor and her daughter, she was shocked and saddened.
“I cried,” she said. “I don’t think she would have taken her own life or her daughter’s life.”
“I hope they catch whoever did this.”
Kiki’s 19-year-old daughter Kiera said she had not met the mother or daughter but was shocked to learn such a horrific crime had taken place in her neighborhood.
“It’s also the first time I’ve heard of a murder since we’ve lived here,” said Kiera, who moved to the block from Harlem three years ago with her mother.
“It’s heartbreaking. You don’t expect to hear something like that. And the dog!’
Azaria was stabbed once in the back, but it was believed a blunt force trauma to the head killed her.
She was found with a bag over her head that likely contained blood spatter, according to NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny.
Rivas died of a lung injury but also had knife wounds to his neck and wrists that appeared to be self-inflicted.
The dog named Biscuit also had a bag over his head.
The 37-year-old died from a lung injury, but also had wounds to her neck and wrists that appeared to be self-inflicted
Azaria was stabbed once in the back but was believed to have died of blunt force trauma to the head
Police could not confirm whether the deaths were caused by murder or murder-suicide
“When you see a mother and her daughter, there’s always drama between mothers and daughters.” “I never saw anything concerning,” said neighbor Steve Schor.
The 38-year-old and his wife have been living in the apartment directly below the site of the gruesome murder since June. They were the first residents to move into the building.
On Friday morning around 7:22 a.m. Schor and his wife were woken up by loud bangs and screams.
He said his dog, Lucky, started barking loudly. Concerned, the neighbor called 911 and told operators it sounded like someone was being “killed” upstairs.
“It wasn’t a typical sound,” he said. “We heard the whole thing going down – it was loud and it was banging and screaming – until it didn’t.”
“What hit me really hard was that the dog had suffocated. “It’s very hard to shake that.”
Officers from the 67th Precinct arrived and knocked on the door of Rivas’ apartment, but no one answered.
Schor heard one of the officers ask a supervisor whether he should stay or go. He said the officer left the scene several minutes later.
Everything was quiet over the weekend, but on Monday around 2:30 p.m. an upstairs neighbor called the police about a foul smell in the building.
After the call, Schor said a swarm of police officers, lieutenants and investigators were at the scene “all day and all night.”
Police were already on scene when a man believed to be Rivas’ ex-boyfriend arrived and broke into the apartment only to find the bodies. He screamed before collapsing and being taken to hospital.
The bodies were wheeled out on stretchers around 10 p.m. Schor and other residents watched in horror as they were carried through the lobby.
Rivas’ ex-boyfriend had been trying to contact the two since Friday, he said, but they had not responded.
“So obviously this happened on Friday when we called 911 and nothing was done until yesterday,” Schor said. So that’s two days of them just sitting up there with no notice or anything like that.’
Schor’s upstairs neighbors told him they were starting to smell the rotting corpses.
“When the police left (on Friday), I thought they would leave and do nothing about it. So it was worrying, but what can I do? “I’m just a normal guy,” he said.
“I bet if this was the Upper East Side, they would have broken down the door. I used to live on the Upper East Side, and if something like that happened, they would be there five minutes later, not an hour.
Schor claimed to have overheard some details of the crime as detectives entered the building.
He said: “I remember yesterday the police said there was blood everywhere. And they said it looked like they were fighting on the ground.”
Another neighbor said he called 911 Friday morning after hearing screaming and banging coming from the apartment
Police knocked on the door of Rivas’ unit, but no one answered. On Monday, another resident called to complain about the smell of rotting meat
The bodies were removed around 10 p.m. as residents watched them being carried through the lobby
Rivas’ uncle posted a message on social media that read, “Mental health officials, New York City Child Protective Services and NYPD have failed her.”
The 38-year-old, who already suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, said he had ongoing safety concerns.
“There is only one door with a pane of glass that protects us from the outside world.” Whether it was a murder-suicide or a murder does not matter. Make sure we feel safe in our homes,” he said.
He added that the security camera outside the building’s front door is “basically our only form of security.”
When asked if the building notified tenants of the gruesome crime, Schor said the property manager called and assured him he would come by, but that never happened.
“I think the city has a responsibility to take care of us, especially because they’re the ones who left and didn’t do anything,” he said.
Schor said he and his wife moved to a house in Pennsylvania during the pandemic, but she was afraid of being in the middle of the woods and being killed in an ax murder.
“So we moved here and then this happened. ‘That’s why I prefer the bears.’
It’s unclear whether he plans to stay in the building in Little Haiti, Schor said. He planned to talk to the landlord because “we pay a lot of money to live here.”
“I’ll think about it every day I’m here,” he said. “Playing the sounds over and over again.” “Now that I know what happened, the images are colored by the anticipation of what it would have been like, and that’s terrible.”
An NYPD spokesperson told that the investigation is ongoing. Authorities could not confirm whether it was a murder-suicide or a murder.
A day after her death, Azalea’s uncle posted on Facebook: “Many stories will come out, but the only true story is that Azalea loved her baby!”
“Mental health officials, New York City Child Protective Services and the NYPD failed them.”
There were no arrests.