By 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, detectives and officers, including some with the Emergency Service Unit’s canine team, had cordoned off the corner at East Houston and Suffolk Streets.
As some officers stood in front of the building, a canine officer led a German shepherd back and forth near the building while the dog sniffed at garbage bags and a side entrance.
Reporters and cameramen stood in Houston Street and across from the building on Suffolk, while patrons sat in the outdoor dining area of a Suffolk Street bar called Subject sipping drinks as more officers arrived.
Leslie Feinberg, who owns the bar with Brian Grummert, said that as “a nosy neighbor,” she had walked over to take a look when police cars, ambulances and fire trucks converged on the apartment building several hours earlier.
“I saw a young woman in hysterics” in the lobby, Ms. Feinberg said.
“From my understanding, she found the victim,” Ms. Feinberg said, adding that men whom she took to be detectives had led the young woman from the scene.
Ms. Feinberg said she had come to know many of the building’s residents during the three years she has operated the bar. She described them as mostly well-off professionals in their 30s and 40s.
Word spread quickly that something bad had happened in the apartment building, she said.
“This neighborhood is very tight-knit,” she said. “It seemed within moments everybody knew what was happening.”
Her own reaction, Ms. Feinberg said, was “total shock.”
“You kind of forget New York City is New York City sometimes,” she said.